


Pagans, Outlaws, and Bandidos, Oh My!

by SylvanWitch



Series: Biker 'Verse [3]
Category: Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Apocalyptic crossover of doom, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 07:04:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 63,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd think killing the Devil, rising from the dead, and returning triumphant to the arms of your waiting lover, the King of the World, would mean happily ever after, right?  Obviously, you've never been to Charming, California, after the End of the End of the World.  Volume Two of the Biker 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pagans, Outlaws, and Bandidos, Oh My!

_Purpose is often harder to discern than action.  Doing becomes meaning.  Explaining is more difficult._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 2:3-5)

 

The sky is that painful blue they sometimes get these days, since the demonic storms and the sulfuric clouds—not to mention the manmade pollution—cleared. 

 

Jax squints against the piercing brightness, reverses his hat so the bill covers his face.  Seemed disrespectful to wear shades, so he left them home.

 

The ground is uneven with new graves, some of them just putting up the barest green hair of grass, others scraped red and raw like the remains beneath them are still bleeding out.

 

He tightens his jaw to keep from spitting out the bitterness he tastes in his mouth when he thinks about the past year and turns his head to take in Dean, who’s beside him, making their slow way to the agreed-upon place.

 

A year ago today, Jax lost Dean.

 

A year ago today, Jax’s mother died.

 

A year ago today the world didn’t end.

 

Seems the least they can do is say a few words of remembrance and thanks.

 

The usual crew makes up a wide, solemn circle around Gemma’s grave, which is neatly tended, already flowering.  Jax had seen to it that she had a wildflower blanket, had seeded it himself, salted it with few, tight tears.

 

Maybe those are the places where the green is thin.

 

Jax shakes off the memory of those days, watches Dean closely.  Some days, the pain is worse than others, but Jax suspects Dean’s halting gait comes more today from reluctance than recuperation.

 

Deliberately, Jax lets his shoulder bump Dean’s and then uses his lover’s unsteady swaying as an excuse to put a hand to Dean’s elbow.

 

Predictably, Dean shrugs out of the touch.  He hates to be seen as weak, wounded.  But Dean’s eyes cut to Jax’s, and Jax holds the look, slowing them both with the heat of his gaze.

 

Dean lets out a shaky breath and nods, lips tight around his feelings, eyes careful.

 

Not the time or the place.

 

Ope stands with Rita and Ellie, the kind of latter day “family” group that’s grown more and more common since the stragglers started trickling in to Charming, seeking safety and hope.

 

‘course, Rita had been here already, one of the few sweetbutts from before the end to survive and now Ope’s old lady and doing a passable job of keeping the new girls in line.

 

By the way Ellie holds her hand and leans into her hip from between Ope and Rita, Jax guesses Rita makes a pretty good mother, too.

 

Something in his chest eases a little to see it. 

 

Gemma’s sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.

 

Jax can’t help look at Dean again once they’ve stopped, side by side, next to the simple granite headstone.  Clay’s is a few feet to the left, Jax’s father’s a few feet to the right.

 

Jax, Dean, and Gemma are between them, bridging the whole history of the club.

 

Bobby begins, his whiskey-rough voice easy and low over the words.  He has a prayer book or bible or something, but Jax sees a folded sheet of paper between the pages, knows what’s coming.

 

John Teller had something to say for every occasion, and as the words of his father’s manifesto carry over the warm, sun-bright air, Jax lets them go.

 

Part of him hears suffering, sacrifice, love, brotherhood.

 

Part of him is always aware of those things, day and night, even in his sleep reliving what he’s been made over into and become.

 

And part of him stares at the curve of Dean’s lips in profile, at the lean line of his neck muscles where they cord and stretch under his collar, at the broad stretch of his lover’s shoulders under the leather he wears in defiance of—or maybe as a nod to—club custom.

 

Jax lets his eyes linger on the mass of silver scars like frozen worms just visible at the hollow of Dean’s throat.

 

His lips were there last night, feeling the blood hot under the dead flesh, feeling the way Dean rose under him, another kind of defiance.

 

Resurrection has its benefits.

 

The quiet of the teasing breeze in the leaves overhead brings Jax back to the day, and he sees Dean looking at him with an amused, knowing smirk.

 

Jax tries not to flush as he steps forward toward his mother’s graveside.

 

“Gemma would find this whole thing kinda stupid,” he begins, earning ragged, irregular laughter. 

 

“If she were here, she’d tell you to head over to her house for dinner and drink away your sorrows with family.  That’s what the Sons were always about for Gemma:  Family.  That’s what she gave her life to protect, like any one of us would do.  So in honor of Gemma, let’s not spend too much time sorrowing over what’s past.  Let’s get the cryin’ done so we can party with our family.”

 

The approving noise is still carrying on the warm wind when Jax takes from beneath his cut three items:  a condom in a shiny red wrapper; a bottle of Jack, still sealed; and an unopened pack of Marlboro Reds--   gifts rich and rare these days.

“Saved these for you, Mom,” he says, putting each of the objects on the pedestal of the stone and then patting the top of it as he straightens up. 

 

He looks around at the assembled crew, at the men he calls brothers, at the sweetbutts, old ladies, kids.

 

“Clubhouse.  One hour,” he adds by way of post-script, turning away from Gemma’s grave.

 

“Hour?” Dean asks, quiet, so only Jax hears him.

 

People stream around them, slapping Jax on the shoulder, some of them doing the same to Dean, who takes it without a change in expression.

 

“Got one more stop to make.  This ain’t the only graveyard in town.”

 

Beside him, Dean stops, and the flow of traffic shifts, widening to give them privacy.  Even Opie takes one look, steps slowing, and then keeps on walking, eyes averted, trailing his little family behind him.

 

“No.”

 

Jax has gotten pretty good at reading the tones of Dean’s voice, the ones that mean yes, the ones that mean no.  The ones that suffer some confusion. 

 

Sometimes what Dean wants and what he needs are entirely different things.

 

“Yes,” Jax answers lightly, moving ahead of Dean, forcing the man to quicken his pace if he means to follow like Jax knows he will.

 

After all, the keys to the Impala are a familiar weight in his jeans’ right pocket.

 

Dean catches up to him at the car, where Jax leans against the driver’s side fender, joint in his mouth, lips tight around it, sweet smoke already staining the blue air above him.

 

Jax takes the spliff from his lips, offers it wordlessly to Dean, who leans beside Jax and accepts it with the ease of long use.  Pot helps with the pain, Jax knows.  It isn’t about getting high, though he’s pretty sure Dean doesn’t mind the side effects.

 

Forgetfulness.

 

Euphoria.

 

Hungers he can satisfy.

 

“Look, I don’t need to—“ 

 

“Shut up.  We’re goin’.”

 

He feels more than sees Dean’s stance shift, the tightening of his jaw, tension in his shoulders all familiar signs.

 

“Just ‘cause you’ve got these people fooled into thinkin’ you always know what’s best doesn’t mean you can fool me, Jax.  You forget I know what goes on in that head of yours at night, when everyone else is sleeping sound, dreamin’ of blue skies and freakin’ rainbows?”

 

Jax does turn to Dean then, taking him in in profile, seeing his jaw muscles jump where he’s bitten down hard on his words.  He waits until Dean gives in to the inevitable and looks back, and then he lets a slow, smart-ass smile creep across his face.

 

It’s calculated to piss Dean off.

 

Jax isn’t disappointed, though he thinks maybe he got the math a little wrong this time.

 

Dean straightens up and starts walking, slow at first because his knee always stiffens up when he’s not using it, and then faster as it works itself out and can take more weight.

 

“I’ll see you there,” Jax calls after him, reaching into his pocket for the Impala’s keys. 

 

Which is when he sees Dean raise first a finger, the usual one, and then his thumb, through which he’s hooked the keychain.

 

“Son of a—.”  He laughs and then jogs up behind Dean.  “C’mon, man, it’s a long walk to the bunker.”

 

“Guess it’s a good thing the clubhouse is a lot closer, then.”

 

“Dean,” Jax begins, voice low and pleading.  He’s not above using what he knows works in their bed, even if it does sound a lot like begging out here under the open sky.

 

Dean stops and whirls on Jax, swaying a little to catch himself, knee probably screaming agony at the sudden move.  If it hurts, it doesn’t show on Dean’s face, though.

  
What’s there is anger and hurt and behind that a resignation that it makes Jax a little queasy to see. 

  
Like Dean expects Jax to betray him. 

 

“I don’t need to go to the stinking pit where my brother died, Jax.  I don’t need to stare into it and make my peace or share and cry or some stupid psychological bullshit.  I see that fuckin’ pit every goddamn night in my fuckin’ dreams.  There is no peace, Jax.  Not for me.  So leave it, okay?  Just…”

 

Dean seems to realize he’s raised his voice, catching himself with a flush and taking a sudden, intense interest in the scuffed toes of his boots.

  
“Just leave it,” he finishes quietly, looking back up.

 

There’s more pleading in Dean’s face than Jax could ever give voice to, in or out of the bedroom.

 

“Okay,” he says, nodding convulsively and slapping Dean on the shoulder, knowing it’s the only touch his lover will allow just then.

 

“Can I have the keys?” He asks awkward seconds later, trying to lighten the mood with a tone that falls somehow flat.

“Not like I could use ‘em,” Dean says, and there’s no self-pity there, only a bitter recognition of the facts.  

 

He’s been healing from the awful burns he earned in the furnace of his brother’s infernal embrace, the amulet that had been a gift of Sam’s innocent love doing the work that a legion of angels and God himself could not, namely driving the devil back down to hell, this time, hopefully, for good.

 

But Dean’s range of motion is still pretty limited, and while he might be able to drive, he couldn’t react quickly in emergencies.  Not wanting to risk anyone’s life, never mind his beloved car, Dean refused to get behind a wheel until he was fit.

 

Hours of physical therapy and workouts that might break a lesser, younger man, had done some good.

 

But not enough.

 

No one wanted to say that Dean might not get any better.  But as days stretched into months and the months made up a year, everyone was wondering if maybe Dean’s recovery had peaked.

 

Dean himself said nothing, not even to Jax, but Jax, who had been gifted with a touch of intuition when the world didn’t end, knew that the ex-hunter was starting to despair.

  
What he didn’t know was what to do about it.

 

Jax doesn’t drive them right back to the clubhouse.  Opie and Rita are handling the details of the party, and besides, what benefit is there to being in charge if he couldn’t sometimes take his sweet-ass time?

 

Instead, he drives them out to Veteran’s Park, down to the end of a dirt track that widens into informal parking under the wide, high branches of sycamore trees.

 

The semen-scented sap is sharp in the air when they get out, and it quickens his pulse like it always does, something wild and alive about it.

 

They perch on a picnic table listing a little on its spraddled legs.

 

It shifts with their weight, and they share a nervous chuff of laughter as they wait to be sure they aren’t going to fall on their asses.

 

Jax relights the salvaged joint, takes in and holds a lungful, passes it to Dean.

 

“Nah, I’m good.”

 

Dean unconsciously rubs his left knee, belying his assertion, but Jax doesn’t push.  Been enough of that for one day.

 

Somewhere in the tree overhead, a cicada rasps up a minor scale, marking the late summer with its song.  At the playground at the other end of the park, kids are playing a loud game, their laughter and shouts of outrage blurring over the distance until it’s only joy he hears where they are.

 

“It’s a good day,” Jax says eventually, and he catches Dean’s nod out of the corner of his eye.

 

He leans into Dean, feeling the man’s solid warmth where their arms touch.

 

“You okay?”

 

Another nod. 

 

“Dean.”  It’s not pushing, not this time. 

 

“I’m okay, Jax.  I’m just… .”

 

He leans again, literally pushing, and Dean leans back, letting out a snort.

 

“You don’t have to be nice to me to get in my pants, you know.  I’m sort of a sure thing.”

 

“You’re a total slut,” Jax corrects.  It’s an old routine, and Dean laughs, a genuine sound that loosens something in Jax’s chest.

 

“I’m just tired.  Wish I could get through a whole night once in awhile, get on top of it.”

 

It’s Jax’s turn to nod.  “Yep,” he says feelingly.  Their room is not a restful place at night.  Too many ghosts crowd it.  There’s no room for them, king-size bed or no.

 

“You think it’s gonna get better?” Jax asks.  He’s pretty sure he already knows what Dean thinks, but it can’t hurt to get him talking.

 

“No.”  There’s a weight of scorn there heavier than Jax expected. 

 

Then again, maybe it’s better they leave it alone.

 

“We should get back,” Dean says by way of deflection, and Jax accepts it gratefully.  He might have a spidey sense where the people of Charming are concerned, but when it comes to Dean, he still has to feel his way a lot of the time.

 

The party’s already in full swing when they pull in and park beside a long row of bikes lined up at one side of the apron in front of Teller-Morrow Automotive.  Bobby’s set up the barbecue along the clubhouse wall, fragrant clouds of hickory smoke rolling out of the big barrels. 

 

Kerry and J.C. are working the bar, pulling longnecks from coolers and wiping them down with towels, mixing drinks from a rainbow array of liquors and pouring them into plastic cups.

 

Near the closed first bay, Chibs is hawking a dunk tank and duck pool for the kids, Sack pulling himself dripping from the water.  Rita watches the wading pool with an eagle eye, looks up to wave and smile at Jax and Dean, who both wave back.

  
She’s a sight in a blue bikini top, Daisy Dukes, and flip-flops.

 

“It’s good to be king,” Dean notes, accepting a sweating beer from Kerry, who gives him a sassy wink.

 

“Absolutely,” Jax agrees, sucking a lime slice from between J.C.’s lips.  She giggles like a little kid and hands him a beer, too.

 

“Where’s Ope?” He asks Piney, who’s testing the strength of a lawn lounge by filling it with his own weight and the weight of the skimpy young thing in a red bikini who’s sharing it with him.

 

“Patrol with Hale’s guys,” Piney answers, taking a pull from a bottle of tequila and licking the line of salt the girl has poured between her breasts.  She erupts in laughter and tosses her hair out of her face to give Jax an inviting look.

 

Jax drawls, “Sorry, sweetheart,” and loops his forearm around Dean’s neck to pull him closer.

 

“She’s new,” Piney offers by way of apology, tipping the bottle into her mouth like feeding a baby bird.

 

Dean ducks out of Jax’s embrace and steps into his space, “You want to make this a private party?”

 

“Hell, yeah.”  Jax answers, herding Dean toward the clubhouse door.  Dean doesn’t take much persuading.

 

Dean’s a silhouette ahead of him in the hall, door closing to a sliver of sunlight behind them, when he hears, “Jax!”

 

Sighing, Jax stops the door with his heel and turns into it, opening it once more.  Behind him, Dean curses.

 

Opie takes up most of the sunlight to say, “There’s a visitor at the gate.”

 

Jax’s immediate answer, “So what?” dies on his lips when he takes in his VP’s expression.

 

“Who is it?”

 

Opie shakes his head.  “You’d better come.”

 

He nods, “Yeah, okay,” trusting Ope’s judgement.

 

He feels Dean come up behind him.

 

“Maybe you want to take this one alone,” Ope adds, not bothering to pitch his voice low. 

 

Jax looks closer at Ope, but the big man’s face is closed to him.  Ope’s eyes are on Dean, over Jax’s shoulder.

 

“I’ll stay here,” Dean offers, something hard warring with neutrality in his voice.

 

“No,” Jax says, staring at Ope, who looks back at him.  “We do this together, like always.”

 

It’s not exactly true, in fact.  Some days, one or the other of them can’t make it out to the gate to welcome stragglers—survivors from who-knows-where who show up in twos and threes, sometimes by the truck-load, sometimes alone.  Once in awhile, neither of them is there to see who comes in.

 

Weeks can go by with no one at all asking for sanctuary from the lawless bands of Scavengers; from the infected undead, some of whom didn’t die with the devil; from the disease and famine that ravage a civilization precariously perched on the edge of utter annihilation.

Other times there’s a steady stream, like it’s been for the last three weeks.

 

“Okay,” Dean answers, neutrality being edged out by victory, Jax thinks.  Ope and Dean have an uneasy peace between them.

 

Back out through the laughing crowd, music blasting from speakers, voices raised in happy abandonment.

 

They don’t have too many reasons to party like it’s not the end of the world, and it makes Jax warm, makes him feel steady and safe to know he can give them this, at least.

 

Another glance at Ope’s face invites an icy chill, and Jax feels a new tension behind his eyes blooming into pain.

 

They follow Ope the couple of miles to the new gate in the junker bunker, which they’ve extended into a wall around the north end of the town, wrecked cars dragged in and layered with a crane into a rusting line of demarcation.

 

Even with the holy watchdog still frying evildoers, they take no chances.  It’s that kind of world now.

 

The old gate is impassable, the gaping chasm where Dean’s brother died still seething ugly smoke, stinking like burning bodies.

 

He smells it through the open windows as they roll by, Dean’s face averted like there’s something really interesting out Jax’s side.

 

Their eyes catch and hold as he slows to a stop behind Ope, but neither of them speaks.

 

They walk through a broad, cleared space on the Charming side of the bunker to the bunker itself and then through a maze of crushed cars to the gate.  To either side of them, towers made from upended semi trailers shadow the way.  The guards on the M50s mounted on top look out impassively over the scene below them, a scene that Jax takes in for the first time as he clears the last of the wrecked cars.

 

Four stragglers wait in a rough half-circle, a tall, hawk-nosed man in front.  Slightly behind him and to his left is a woman, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, mouth thin with worry. 

 

Two kids, maybe fifteen or sixteen, gender unclear, make up the rest of the group, their torn jeans and ragged hoodies testament to their trial in coming this far.

 

“Jax,” the woman says, and that’s when he knows.

 

He doesn’t think he makes a sound, but he must, because Dean beside him says, “Jax?” worried.  On his other side, Ope crosses his arms and takes a biding stance.

 

“Jax?” Dean tries again, and Jax knows he should answer, but he can’t.

 

“It can’t be…” he manages, taking a halting step toward the group.

 

The tall man comes toward him, hand out behind him in a clear “Stay” gesture. 

 

The man’s boot toes just brush the line of shadow the bunker casts over them, and he stops.

“You the leader of Charming?”  He says it like he doesn’t really care about the answer.  No, like the answer doesn’t matter to his plans one way or the other.

 

“Yeah.  Who the fuck are you?”

 

“I’m the one who’s bringing Tara home, Teller.”

 

Jax looks at Tara, who’s maybe six feet away, eyes hidden, mouth tight.  The fingers of her left hand move worriedly over the loose thread where her tee-shirt has started to unravel at the bottom.  He lets his look linger, possessive, and when he brings his eyes back to the man, there’s an ugly challenge on his lips.

 

“ _She’s_ welcome here.”  The emphasis is definite.

 

“All or none.”

 

Jax laughs, tucks his hands in his jeans pockets, shrugs.  “Sure.”

 

This isn’t the way they usually do things.  Usually, one of them vets the stragglers, finds out what use they might be, how they’ll fit into life in Charming. 

 

‘course, no matter what they decide, they aren’t the final arbiters.

 

Jax laughs again.  He’s pretty sure what the big guy’ll think about this asshole.

 

“Come ahead,” he calls to the other three, giving the guy his back like he doesn’t care that the love of his former life is trailing a few feet behind him.

 

He’d forgotten about Dean and Ope until he reaches them, and then he can’t do much besides throw a thumb back at the group and say, “Let ‘em in.”

 

“Who are they?” Dean asks, clearly mystified by this change in the protocol that Jax, himself, had insisted on instituting.

 

“One of ‘em’s a friend,” is all Jax says.

 

“The others?” Dean adds, catching up.  Jax hasn’t stopped walking, realizes he’s moving fast only when he hears the strain in Dean’s voice at keeping up.

 

“We’ll see.”

 

Ope, silent until now, pauses to call back to the stragglers, “Stay between the white stones.”

 

They line up, Jax in the middle, ten yards past the end of the minefield and well beyond a place where the macadam of what was once a road has been blasted so often it looks like pea gravel.

 

The man, Tara, and the teens wait uncertainly where the last white stones mark the true beginning of Charming.

 

“Come ahead,” Ope orders, deep voice a bark over the distance.

The teens huddle together, bumping shoulders like frightened sheep and don’t make progress.  The man gives them a disdainful look, says something to Tara that makes her face freeze into a mask of dispassion, and strides confidently toward Jax, Dean, and Ope.

 

Thunder rumbles overhead. 

 

The man’s stride doesn’t falter, but he risks a glance at the still cloudless sky.

 

The hair on Jax’s arms stands up, the air electrified, as a bolt sizzles out of nowhere and reduces the man from surprised sneer to smoking ash in the span of a millisecond.

 

Jax smiles.

 

“Come ahead,” Ope repeats.

 

The kids are shaking their heads and clutching each other, eyes huge in their pale faces.  Jax thinks the smaller of the two might be a girl.

 

Tara takes a hesitant step toward them.

  
“It’s okay, Tara.  Don’t be afraid,” Jax assures her, though he himself isn’t as certain as he sounds.  After all, she’s been gone a long time.  There’s no telling what she’s become in the interim.

 

The time it takes her to cross the yards between them attenuates, stretching until Jax can’t hold his breath any longer, and he lets it out in a relieved sigh when she makes it over the broken road, not even pausing to glance down at what was once the man who brought her here.

 

When she’s past the point of no return, she increases her pace until she’s almost running, and when she launches herself at Jax, he has to brace himself to catch her, keep them both from falling backward.

 

“Hey, woah.  Woah.  It’s okay.”  She’s shaking and sobbing against him, tears already soaking the collar of the white Sons tee he wears under his cut.  His hand strokes her back soothingly, and he murmurs nonsense into her ear, still not really sure that Tara is alive and well.  That she’s come home.

 

Even the terrified shrieks of the teens as the sky comes apart above them doesn’t make him open his eyes, which is why he doesn’t see the expression on Dean’s face as he holds Tara again for the first time in years.

 

*****  
 _There’s no such thing as getting comfortable.  Right when you think you’ve got life figured, something happens to teach you just how wrong and cocky and stupid you were.  I’ve heard that this makes life interesting.  I’d say it just makes it tiring._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 3:6-9) __

Dean’s never really understood the term “pole-axed” before now, but he guesses it’s as good a way as any to describe Jax’s face when he hears the voice of the woman in the group waiting for entrance at the gate.

 

“Jax?” He asks, curious and maybe a little alarmed.  He thought he’d learned all of Jax’s expressions by now, but this one he can’t quite work out.

 

Dean looks at the woman who’s got Jax transfixed, takes in the dark hair, pale, thin face, tight mouth.  She’s a mousy little thing from this distance, nothing threatening about her.

 

_She a witch?_

 

Then he snorts to himself, remembering that the supernatural is still his gig, despite the ample evidence the end of the world offered that the things that go bump in the night are perfectly capable of creeping around by day, too.

 

So probably not a witch.

 

Dean takes his eyes off the strangers long enough to see how Opie’s taking Jax’s weird behavior.

 

That’s when his worry doubles. 

 

“Jax?” he asks again.  He doesn’t like the hint of satisfaction he sees on Opie’s otherwise impassive face.

 

But if Jax hears Dean, he doesn’t indicate it, taking an uncertain step or two forward before hitching into his usual saunter.  The man with the sneering eyes starts ahead, too, ordering the others to stay back with a gesture.

 

Left behind to watch, Dean observes the strange man’s variety of superior expressions and the way he carries himself and pegs him for a fed.  Former fed.  Doesn’t mean jack shit these days except maybe that he can shoot, which is a good skill to have, anyway.

 

Of course, judging from his gestures, the guy’s an asshole.  Dean wonders if he’ll make it past the gatekeeper.

 

After what seems a span of ages, Jax turns around and walks back to him, except that he doesn’t stop, just brushes by Dean, saying, “Let ‘em through,” like an afterthought and making his swift way to the safety zone beyond the broken road where so many others have met or avoided immediate judgment.

 

He tries not to watch Jax’s face as the fed approaches, tries to ignore the obvious tension in the line of his lover’s shoulders, at the way Jax has his fists clenched against his thighs, but it’s hard not to see that Jax is deeply invested in what happens next.

 

When that shit-eating grin Dean knows so well breaks across Jax’s face, Dean feels his stomach sink.  Jax really wanted the fed dead.

 

‘course, Dean wasn’t real fond of the guy, either, and he hadn’t even talked to him.

A dick’s a dick.  A federal dick’s worse.

 

But if Jax had that much interest in the man’s fate, it’s got to be connected to the woman.

 

The wait for her to pass the test is tense.  He can see the muscle in Jax’s jaw ticcing viciously, hears the exhalation through his nose when Jax lets out his breath once she’s on solid ground again.

 

Hears the way her body impacts Jax’s, the way he grunts a little taking her weight.  Hears Jax’s voice low and soothing, the same sounds he sometimes uses to quiet Dean’s worst dreams, the ones where Sam is still alive inside the fire, screaming, begging…

 

To have something to do other than watch Jax get pawed by the woman, whose name is apparently Tara, he watches the teens get fried.

 

He’s distracted enough that it doesn’t even make him wince, his usual reaction to Charming’s answer to the pit bull.

 

Finally, they’re back in the Impala, Opie out in front of them on his bike like a diplomatic escort, Tara in his back seat sniffling and hiccupping.

 

He should feel sorry for her, but mostly he feels uncomfortable and a little out of place, which pisses him off, since it’s his car.

 

“So, how long you two known each other?” Dean asks, fake-hearty, the kind of casual, joshing tone you’d expect of one buddy preparing to rib another.

 

“Since we were kids,” Tara answers.  Out of the corner of his eye, Dean takes in the way Jax’s hands tighten on the wheel.

  
“Feels like a million years ago,” Jax adds—by way of warning, Dean knows.

  
Screw that.

 

“You two date?”

 

Tara’s laugh is exhausted and a little hysterical, and before she can follow it with an answer Dean’s not sure he wants to hear, Jax says, “Shit.”

 

Shit, indeed.  Dean had forgotten all about the party.

 

“Wow,” Tara says faintly.  “I haven’t seen this many people since…”

 

She breaks off, but they don’t need her to finish.  The story is different and yet somehow exactly the same for everyone who’s sought shelter in Charming:  anguish, terror, and the end of days.

 

“Hey, we don’t have to do this—“ Jax’s tone is concerned, warm, and Dean resists the urge to clench his fists.  This isn’t about how he feels.  The girl’s obviously been through hell.

 

Dean knows from hell.

 

“No, no.  It’ll be…good…to see everyone.  Your mom, is she—?”

 

Jax shakes his head, and Dean does clench his fists this time, to keep from putting his hand on Jax’s thigh or his shoulder, to keep from offering the comfort he ordinarily would.

 

Gemma left a hole bigger than the one that swallowed his brother.

 

“I’m so sorry, Jax.”  She sounds like she means it, and it occurs to Dean that Tara must have known Gemma a long time.

 

Longer than he ever did, regardless of how important she was to Dean in the few days he did know her.

 

Jax nods, breathes out, gets out to offer Tara a hand while Dean is still working his slow way up from the passenger seat.  His knee has stiffened even in the short ride, and it’s hell straightening it out, taking the first few steps, pain like knives through joint and sinew.

 

Jax has a hand at Tara’s back several feet ahead, and they’re just up to the first crowd of drinking, laughing people when he turns to look back at Dean.

 

Dean waves him on casually, like it’s every day that Jax’s ex-girlfriend reappears from the dead.

 

Then the two are obscured by a ring of partiers, and he hears voices raised in surprise and welcome, sees what promises to be a flurry of one-armed guy-hugs and squealing girly shit, and decides he needs to take a piss.

 

The clubhouse is blessedly quiet, the door closing out light and sound behind him in an almost ominous way.  A sudden chill catches him in a shiver.

  
Scoffing at his folly—the places his mind takes him these days, man, _that_ he could live without—Dean heads for the can and then snags a beer out of the fridge behind the bar.

 

Happy to find that no one’s fucking on the couch in the common room, Dean sits there with his beer and props his bad leg on the beat-up coffee table, knocking a four-year-old titty mag and two well-thumbed gun catalogues onto the floor as he does so.

 

Leaning his head on the couch back, pouring the beer steadily down his throat, Dean shuts his eyes and tries not to think what any of this might mean. 

 

It’s hard not to take Tara’s miraculous survival as some kind of divine message.  Fuck knows it’s not like there have been any other signs from the big guy about why, exactly, Dean came back from the dead.  Maybe he’s meant to move on, find some other place to call his own.  Find some other mission than being Jax’s…whatever he is.

 

Seems like God was better the first time around in the information department.  Far as he knows, though, Dean hasn’t been asked to charge a gathering of disciples with spreading the Word of God.

 

He’d be happy for _one_ goddamned word at this point.  Some single, miniscule indication of God’s plan.

 

Dean snorts, chokes on the last swallow of beer.  God’s plan.  _Isn’t that an oxymoron?_

 

Wiping spittle from his chin, Dean leans forward to plunk the bottle on the table, suppressing a groan at the way the muscles around his knee stretch and protest.  His only concession to the pain is a breathy sigh as he sinks back against the couch.

 

Fuck, but he’s sick of this shit.  Not the pain—pain’s a given.  ( _Just means you’re alive_ , the ghost of John Winchester says.)

 

The uselessness rides him, though, every fucking day another reminder of what he can’t do anymore.  Which leads him right back to wondering what the big guy had in mind when he brought Dean back from the dead.

 

Certainly it couldn’t only have been to spook Bobby Elvis.  Guy had taken to carrying a bible with him everywhere, muttering over the New Testament like it would open its secrets to him if only he could find the right incantation.  Giving Dean the gimlet eye when he thought Dean wasn’t looking.

 

Guess as the club’s only Jew, he might have a corner on concern about the “new messiah” legend stragglers kept coming in with.

 

Dean had heard his own story retold until it made the telephone game seem a paragon of accuracy.  In one version, spilled by a scrawny twenty-something with a beard that Moses might have envied, Dean had “vanquished” the devil with a magic word and the “Sigil of Solomon,” whatever the fuck that was.

 

And Gemma had wings that carried her to heaven.

 

And Jax sang the Lord’s Prayer in ancient Aramaic.

 

So Bobby’s uncertainty is, at least, understandable.  But Dean’s pretty damned sure he’s no savior. 

 

“Fuck it,” he says aloud, tired of where his head is taking him.  He drags his leg off the table, gets his feet under him, heads toward his and Jax’s room off the hallway beyond the bar.

 

The sound of the exterior door opening, of Jax’s voice calling him, stops him.  He closes his eyes against a surge of exhaustion that almost staggers him, and then answers.

 

“Yeah?”

 

The door closes, and he looks up to see Jax’s solitary shadow making its way toward him down the darkened hall.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Yeah.”  He is.  The mood he’s in is nothing new.  Sure as hell doesn’t need sharing.

 

As he steps into the light, something about Jax’s face makes Dean look closer.  He looks guilty, uncomfortable.  Awkward.

 

Keeping a tired sigh to himself, Dean lets Jax off the hook.  “I was just coming out.  Needed to use the can.”

 

Jax looks like he wants to say something else but thinks better of it.

“Alright.  You should get some venison.  Bobby did a great job with the cooking.”

 

Dean nods.  His stomach is a weighted lead dragging in his gut, the beer a sour soup at the surface of a nauseating sea, but he’ll do what he can to be convivial.

 

The steak is good, he’s got to give Bobby his due, which he does, standing next to the still-warm barrels, beer label peeling off the bottle against his palm.

 

“How you doin’, kid?”

 

Dean makes an expansive gesture, taking in the body shots contest six feet away, “Can’t complain.”

 

“Really?”

 

He asks it in that way he has of suggesting he knows more than Dean’s telling him.  Since the not-end, Bobby’s gotten kind of philosophical.  Always the club’s consigliere, he’s grown from councilor to counselor, settling personal disputes, listening to sob stories.

  
Or so Dean’s heard.  It’s not really his thing to pour his heart out to anyone.  Now’s not the time he’s going to start.

  
He smirks around the bottle’s mouth as he takes a long pull of the tepid, bitter brew.  When he’s swallowed, he tilts his head toward Jax, who’s talking to Sack and Juice, both of whom have a woman on their arm.  Tara’s nowhere to be seen, but Dean’s pretty sure she’s not far.

  
Still, the tableau serves its purpose.

  
“It’s good to be king,” he says.  It’s something they all say.  No one’s quite gotten their heads around Jax’s position in their little society.  Not even Jax himself, truth be told.

 

“And how’s it bein’ the king’s consort?” Bobby asks, not letting the point slide.

  
The smirk fades from Dean’s lips and he’s happy to have the excuse of needing another beer to move away.

 

“’swhat I thought,” Bobby mutters at Dean’s back, but Dean pretends he didn’t hear it.

 

The sky is purpling to the west when the folks with kids and Sally with the orphans from the Home pack into a caravan of mini-vans and pickup trucks, beds occupied by two armed guards each, and head out.  They don’t really expect any trouble inside the town limits, but no one takes any chances.

 

There’s a whole lot of evil of the strictly human variety out there, and all of it’d like to take up residence in Charming.

 

That leaves the usual suspects:  Ope and Rita, Juice, Sack, Bobby, Piney, Chibs, Teague, Kerry and J.C., the other two original sweetbutts, and their newest sisters, Vita and Mouse.

 

And Dean, Jax, and Tara, of course.

By unanimous, unspoken accord, they move the party inside.  Though it’s a nice night, sweet breeze blowing cigarette butts and straw wrappers across the parking lot, there’s still too much open sky up there.  Superstition or not, most people don’t stay out after dark.

 

It’s an irony of the post-apocalypse that Dean can appreciate. 

 

As though they’ve put the party on “mute,” things quiet down once the door closes behind them.  Juice, Sack, and the women gather around the pool table.  Bobby and Piney take their respective stools at the bar.  Chibs stretches out on the couch, Kerry perched on the coffee table at his shoulder, playing with his hair.

 

Ope and Rita disappear.

 

That leaves Dean, Jax, and Tara to make three points of an awkward isosceles around one of the round bar tables.

 

“So you’re Dean.”  She says it with a nervous, breathy laugh, like maybe she’s embarrassed, and he almost feels sorry for her until he sees the way her eyes naturally fasten on Jax like Jax will make it all better.

 

“I am.”  Not rude, exactly.  But not helpful, either.

 

Jax flashes him a look.

 

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

 

Dean can’t help but smirk a little darkly.  He holds back the accompanying snort, though, in deference to the look he can feel Jax drilling him with.

 

“All good things, I’m sure.”

 

Another nervous laugh, more breath.

 

“I’m guessing the part about you healing the lepers is a little off.”

 

He knows she’s just trying to lighten the mood.  Or maybe hoping he’ll take a hint and get lost.  After all, she has no idea why he has any special claim on Jax’s time and attention.

 

Either way, she hits on the one thing he definitely can’t do—heal anyone, particularly himself. 

 

 

Dean knows Tara’s a doctor.  He’d picked up a lot in bits and pieces, fragments of dropped conversations that fell into silence as he entered a group. 

 

Still, he tries, though it’s a weak effort, the laugh barely making it between his lips before it dies on the heavy air.

 

“Yeah, not doin’ that any time soon.”

 

“Tara came from Chicago,” Jax offers like an olive branch. 

 

“That must’ve been a joy ride.  How’d you get around Salt Lake?”

 

Another irony of the post-apocalypse.  Straggler legend says Salt Lake has become a hot bed of Scavenger activity, every kind of vice welcome there.

 

Tara’s face tightens, her gaze moves inward, and Dean regrets the question.

  
“There were more of us…before.  A busload.  The four of us were the only…we’re the only ones who made it here.”

 

“They’ve got some kind of radio relay up that way,” Jax adds, moving the topic off the obviously painful to the more practical.  “Guess there’s a lot of chatter about Charming.”

 

“Well, we’ll have to give our PR guy a raise.”

 

They all laugh, another imitation of humor. 

 

“How’d you—?”  But he leaves it.  She probably doesn’t want to—

 

“Kohn.  The man I was with.  He was an ATF agent in Chicago.  We…knew…each other.  When it—when everything happened, he knew what to do.  Found shelter, transportation.  Got us out of the city.  We met up with a group of other people—mostly first responders, medical personnel—and they helped.  At first we just kept moving all the time, taking turns driving, watching.  We raided stores and homes for food.  Fought off the...the sick ones.   

 

Stayed for awhile on this compound in Colorado.  There were some people there, you know, hippies, I guess.  But they were nice.”

 

Dean must make a motion, startle somehow, because Tara stops talking and both of them are looking at him.

 

“I knew… .  Couldn’t be the same ones, though.  I heard they got…”  He doesn’t really want to take it any further, but he can’t stop there, not with Jax’s eyes on him, cool and knowing.

 

“I knew a woman, a group of women, some men, who lived in Colorado, southwest of Denver.  In the mountains.  They were…”  Witches.  A coven.  He can’t say that.  She had long brown hair and laughing eyes, went barefoot everywhere, and could beat him at any game ever invented.  He can’t say that, either.  “They were into all this New Age crap.”  He shrugs, hoping he sounds dismissive enough that they let it go.

  
“Madeline was the High Priestess of the coven,” Tara says, eyes fixed on Dean.  Her expression is innocent enough, but he can feel her assessing him.

 

He nods jerkily.  “Yeah.”

 

“There was a Scavenger raid.  They didn’t—“

 

“It was demons,” he corrects, voice hard. 

Tara’s the one to nod sharply now.  “Yes.”

 

“Did they—?”  He can’t ask.  Doesn’t want the answer. What difference could it possibly make now, anyway.

 

“They left no survivors.” 

 

It’s a small mercy, and she says it like a prayer.

 

“How’d you get away?”  Dean doesn’t care that it sounds like an accusation.

 

“They didn’t want us.  And Kohn made us leave at the beginning, as soon as we saw who— _what_ —was attacking us.”

 

More nodding, a little convulsive.  He swallows past the surprising pain in his chest.  Madeline had to have been dead two years now, and he hadn’t seen her in at least three, but he remembers her.

 

Maybe that’s his purpose.  To remember all the hunters and helpers, all the good people who died without anyone ever knowing what they sacrificed to try to stop the end of the world.

 

“What’s the story with your friends?”

 

Tara looks pained again, but Dean doesn’t care.  Three of the people she made it to the end with were blowing into atmosphere as the wind outside picked up.  Maybe she should’ve chosen her companions more carefully.

 

“They weren’t… .  The two teens were street kids, I guess?”  She says it like she was never really sure, which Dean doesn’t buy for a minute.

  
“We picked them up outside of Lincoln.  I always got the feeling they were…off.  Wrong.  I don’t know.”  She shrugs helplessly, like assigning motive to human behavior isn’t in her area of specialty.

 

“And Kohn?”

 

“He was evil.”  Her voice is flat, as expressionless as her face, and Dean hears in that more than in any shift in inflection or volume what her life with the man must have been like.

 

“You must be tired,” Jax interjects, clearly putting the interrogation to an end.

 

“Yeah,” in a sort of grateful, breathless voice.  What it lacks in sincerity, it makes up for in implication.

 

This is Dean’s cue to leave.  He shifts in his seat like he’s about to get up when Jax does, instead, surprising them both.  He catches confusion and a flash of annoyance on Tara’s face, there and then gone, so that when she follows Jax’s lead, she’s all grateful smiles again.

 

“Good night,” Dean says, eyes looking over her shoulder at Jax, who’s looking steadily back at Dean.

 

“Good night.”

 

A sporadic chorus of similar well-wishes follows the two down the hallway toward the bedrooms at the back of the clubhouse.

 

Dean wonders if it’s just his imagination that every eye in the place is on him where he sits picking the label off his sweating beer bottle and staring resolutely at a cigarette burn scarring the wooden tabletop.

 

An eternity of mental images later, Jax returns to the common room, and as if they’ve passed a hand signal, everyone else, even Sack, who’s sometimes slow on the social uptake, finds an excuse to leave—bed, beer run, help with patrol.

 

Soon, they’ve got the room to themselves.

 

He’d like to let Jax squirm, but he’s just so tired, so he chooses an expected sally and takes the shot.

 

“She’s pretty hot.”

 

Not Dean’s type, but he can see where she’d clean up.

 

“She’s…an old friend.”

 

So that’s how it’s going to go.

 

“Right.”  Dean makes it sound like he’s agreeing.

 

“We were together.  For awhile.  It was…intense.  But then she left, and we lost touch, and—.  Well, you were around for the rest.”  Jax’s voice is uncertain, like he’s trying to feel his way to an understanding of things even as he’s supposed to be explaining it to Dean.

 

There are a lot of things he could say, but come down to it, Dean’s tired of fighting.  And no damned good for it anymore, either.  She’s pretty and whole and a doctor to boot.  Jax could do worse.   
  
Besides, Dean never did believe in forever.

 

“Look, man, I’m not standing in the way here.  You want her back, she has prior claim.  I get it.  Just tell me when you want me out of here, and I’m gone.” 

 

“What?”

 

And Jax doesn’t sound sorry or uncertain now.  He sounds pissed.  Really pissed.

  
“I’m saying, Tara’s obviously someone important to you.  You want her to stick around, I understand.  It’s okay, man.  I can take one of the empty houses up by the hospital.  Or maybe get a ride out to Arizona, stay with Sari and Cindy.”

 

“You think I’m going to let you walk away just like that?”

 

Dean looks up from the sodden remains of his beer label.  Jax’s face is angry, dark with it, an expression Dean’s only seen a handful of times in the months they’ve known each other and only once directed at him.

 

_Did you bring this on us, you motherfucker?  Did you?_

 

Dean shakes off the echoes of the past, tries to see what’s happening in the here and now.

 

“Is that what you’re looking for, Dean?  An easy out?  Is there something here you’re not telling me, maybe something better you’ve got to do with your time?”

 

Dean shakes his head, anger blooming in his mouth.  He nips it with his teeth, though, and says nothing.

 

“No.  No, you’re going to talk to me, Dean.  None of this stoic bullshit.  Not this time.  You say it.  You want out?”

 

“No.”  It comes out ragged, his throat clamped around it, like it’s being dragged out of him.

 

“Then what’s this about?”  Jax’s voice is no less grave, but there’s something quieter in it.  Dean can’t risk looking at Jax now, not now.  He can’t see the softness he knows will be there around Jax’s eyes.

 

He wants to make this an easy choice.  Wants to.  But he’s not strong enough, he guesses.

 

“I want you to be happy.”

 

“So, what?  Your happiness doesn’t matter?  Or is this another chance for Dean Winchester to martyr himself on the cross of self-sacrifice?  Fuck that shit.  You’re mine, and I’m not letting you go.  We clear?”

 

If he could only get up easily, storm out of the room, out of the clubhouse, get in the Impala, drive away.

 

When he catches Jax’s eyes, sees what he always sees there, Jax looking at him, really _looking_ at him, giving him everything he still doesn’t believe he deserves…

 

Dean knows there’s no escape, even if he could put miles and years between them.

 

_Fuck._

 

“So you’re sayin’ you want me around for your morning blow job?”

 

Jax laughs through his nose and smacks Dean’s hand, where it rests next to the shrapnel of his beer label.

 

“I’m saying I love you, bitch.”

 

Dean nods, swallows, turns his hand over beneath Jax’s so that their palms touch.  It’s the best he can do.  Words can be curses, can become incantations that do more than just bind a man.

 

“You done bein’ all emo and jealous?”

 

Dean removes his hand on the pretense of using it to lever himself out of his chair.  “I’m not jealous.  There’s no way in hell that skinny little chick ever did it for you the way I do.”

 

Jax’s smile is wicked and makes Dean lick his lips, mouth suddenly dry.  He has that effect on Dean, even after all this time.

Four months.  They’ve been together four months (and three days, if you count those apocalyptic end times, which Jax does and Dean does not).  Other than a canine companion, Dean’s never dedicated that much time to any relationship that didn’t involve blood.

 

‘course, there’s still a chance this one will.

 

Letting that wicked image draw a smile across his face, Dean makes clear he’s on board with what Jax has in mind.

 

And if he’s a little more vocal than usual, well, it’s just because he’s been drinking all day and his inhibitions are loose.

 

Certainly, it has nothing to do with the fact that Jax put Tara in Gemma’s old room, just across the hall from their own.

 

Sometime in the night, he awakens to doves of fire erupting into flight from his blackened chest and Sam sobbing in his ear, “Dean!  Dean, save me!  Dean, help me!” over and over again.

 

Jax has flicked on the bedside table lamp and rolled back over to put a hand on Dean’s sweating neck and lean over him, so that Dean’s eyes, when they focus, see nothing but Jax’s own above him.

 

“Okay?” Jax asks, soft.  It’s clearly not, but this is a ritual, too, like so much of what they do together.

 

Dean nods and Jax smoothes his hand down Dean’s neck to rest on the mass of scars just visible above the tee-shirt Dean always wears to bed.

 

“Was I screaming?”  
  


Jax smirks.  “Can only enhance my reputation.”

 

Dean laughs half-heartedly and struggles up onto his elbows to see the clock on Jax’s side of the bed.

 

Five a.m.

 

“Fuck it,” he says, pushing himself upright and moving to sling his legs over the side and get up.

 

Jax’s hand is hot on his back.  “You forgettin’ somethin’?”  
  
Dean turns his head over his shoulder, faux-innocence painted on his face.  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”  But his eyes are on the way Jax’s erection tents the sheet.

 

He bats them for effect and then heaves a put-upon sigh.  “The things I do for you…”

 

Really, it’s no trouble.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Dean has to piss and brush his teeth, maybe not in that order, when he opens the bedroom door to find Tara standing there, eyes wide, hair wild, one hand clutching a man’s flannel shirt around her.

 

“I thought I heard—“

Realization makes her stumble over the rest of the sentence as Dean feels Jax take up the doorway behind him and then rest his hands on Dean’s shoulders, leaning over the right one to say, “Morning,” to Tara.

 

“I—“

 

Dean’s got to hand it to the girl.  She recovers fast. 

 

“I’m sorry.  I was wondering if there were another bathroom.  Piney seems to be taking a long time in this one.”  She makes a hand motion in the direction of the general can.

 

Jax and Dean laugh together, and Tara flushes.

 

“You don’t want to go in there after Piney’s been,” Jax explains.

 

“You want to show her?” Dean asks Jax, feeling a whole lot more gracious this morning.

 

“Sure.”

 

Dean watches Jax walk away with Tara, the taste of Jax still in his mouth, and wonders how long this feeling of surety will last.  He guesses at least as long as Piney will be in the bathroom.

  
It’s better than nothing.

 

*****

 

 

 _The longer I live, the more I see that there’s no definite thing in life but what you decide to believe in.  Life itself will change around you when you aren’t even looking.  All you can do is fix your sight on one single thing that matters, or maybe two or three if you’re really lucky, and then never look away for too long._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 4:16-18)

 

“So…you’re gay now?”

 

Of all the questions she might have asked him, Jax wasn’t expecting that one to top the list, so his answer is knee-jerk and maybe a little defensive. 

 

“Not _just_ now.”

 

He’s glad they’re in the privacy of the office, because she starts to snuffle almost at once, and then he feels like shit.  He’s forgotten she’s not the Tara he knew, the one who’d smack him in the mouth as soon as look at him for being a prick.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, putting his hands on her shoulders.  She moves close, burrows in, and he’d be less of a man if he didn’t wrap her up, hold her while she cries.

  
She’s shaking like the ground’s moving under her feet, and he guesses it probably is. 

 

A few minutes and a lot of nonsense words later, Tara’s standing more or less under her own power and wiping her eyes with a tissue he dug out of a desk drawer.

 

“I’m sorry, Jax,” she says, finally, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes.  “It’s none of my business.  It’s not like you even knew I was alive, much less… .”  She shakes her head like she doesn’t like where that sentence was going, starts again.  “I don’t have any right to think you’d be waiting for me.  I just—.  It’s just been a really long few years.”

 

She gives a thick-throated laugh and rolls her eyes at the understatement, and he manages to work up a smile. 

 

“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t exactly shopping for a big strong man to keep house with.”

 

This gets a bigger laugh, if a little hysterical at the edges, but it’s enough to move them past the awkwardness.  She indicates the bathroom with the hand holding the crumpled tissue, and Jax moves back out into the bar to give her some space and privacy to pull herself together.

 

It’s too early for most of the guys to be up.  Chibs is asleep on the couch, snoring softly, Kerry stretched out on top of him, her hair blanketing his face.

 

Risking a peek behind the bar, he’s relieved to find no naked bodies there before going around the end to snag himself some OJ from the fridge.

 

They’d gotten a pretty good harvest from their own little orange grove this year and had supplemented with a couple of runs down to the big company groves, trees grown wild and gnarly but still producing some fruit.  This was the first year they’d encountered Scavengers staking claims on the trees, but they’d managed to get in and take what they needed with a minimum of bloodshed on their end.

 

Still, he doesn’t gun the whole quart like he would have before the shit hit the fan.  And maybe he savors it a little more, too.

 

Coffee’s less of an issue, since it keeps pretty well in cans, so he makes a big pot of it.  He likes it okay, but Dean loves it, still crooning over it like every cup’s a fucking miracle.

 

Speaking of the devil, Dean appears, nose wrinkled, hand waving in front of his face.

 

“Eyes watering?” Jax asks through a laugh, handing Dean a steaming cup.

 

“What the fuck does he eat, roadkill?”

 

“Fiber, son. You should try it sometime.  Keep that asshole of yours nice ‘n’ loose.”

 

Piney hauls himself up onto the barstool and indicates that Jax should pour him a cup of coffee.

 

Dean laughs.  “Wouldn’t want to take away your title, Piney.”

 

Piney quirks an eye, damned if he’s going to give Dean any other opening.  
  
Jax is quick on it, though.  “Biggest asshole.”

 

All three of ‘em laugh dirty, loud enough to wake up the lovebirds on the couch.

 

“’sthat nectar of the gods I smell?”  Jax thinks Chibs says.  It’s hard to tell.

 

Kerry lifts her head up, blinks blearily as Chibs spits her hair out of his mouth and pushes at her gently to get her moving.  “I need the can, love.”

 

Kerry rolls off of him, stands up, adjusts her halter so it’s actually covering her breasts, and makes a more or less steady bee-line for the coffee.

 

Soon, it’s a family affair, Juice wandering out from the back rubbing his head with one hand, fingers of the other tangled in Mouse’s.  The new girl is smiling shyly and peeking out from behind the curtain of brown hair that earned her her nickname.

 

Sack stumbles in a minute later, yawning so wide Jax can see his tonsils bobbing around back in his throat.

 

J.C. is watching Ellie back at Opie’s to give Rita and Ope the night free, but Vita comes stumbling into the common room, egged on by rhythmic ass-smacks delivered by a grinning Teague.  He’s taken pretty quickly to the Redwood club life.

 

‘course, he’s a Son himself, so there’s no surprise, really.

 

Bobby puts in his appearance when the second pot of coffee is making the rounds of cups, and there’s an immediate call for breakfast. 

 

“What am I, your personal chef?”  It’d be a more convincing protest if he weren’t already tying on his “Cooks Do It Over Hard” apron as he says it.

Dean smiles at him over his second cup of coffee, and Jax is happy to see most of the worry and pain ironed out of his face.  He forgets that Dean’s the same age as him sometimes, inclined to imagine him older if only for the miles he’s put on.

 

There’s a lot of laughter, a lot of dirty jokes about Juice’s stamina, Jax’s skills, and someone waking the dead with his screaming.

 

“You’re all just fuckin’ jealous,” Dean answers, flushed but pleased with the joke.  A glance at Tara shows a strained, plastic smile on her face, but Jax doesn’t say anything to stop the teasing.  She’d better get used to the truth of it now because it isn’t going to change, no matter what Dean thinks might be better for Jax.

 

Looking at his brothers like this, laughing and loose, at the sweetbutts with their easy smiles, Jax feels the heat bloom in his chest, feels like maybe the world can be made over again.  He lets the moment pass, knowing there’s no use in holding on to it, just eats his bacon and watches Dean, who’s deep in conversation with Sack, no doubt about the Impala.  Prospect’s got a hard-on for the big Chevy engine.

 

When the plates are mostly empty, the cups drained, conversation wrangles around to the business of the day.  There’s no formal transition, just a shifting of shoulders, postures readying for the weight they’ll carry.

  
Juice and Teague are getting the Jeep ready for a run up to Eugene tomorrow to try to get some canned goods.  Every town in a two hundred mile radius that isn’t overrun with the undead or held by Scavengers has been picked clean of supplies, and Dan and Jenny Jett say their grocery is low on soup, beans, potted meat and the other prepackaged foods that seem to have kept well past their expiration dates.

 

Ope comes in, sans Rita, to report that Hale’s guys have their guns on two small camps of stragglers at the gate.

 

“You want to take it?”

 

Ope’s eyes cut significantly to Tara.

 

“Yeah, Dean and me’ll go down there.”

 

“What about—?”  Ope asks, making a gesture behind Tara’s back.

 

“Is my dad’s place still there?”  Tara asks, saving Jax the trouble of figuring out a nice way to get rid of her.

 

“Yeah,” Jax says, looking to Ope for confirmation.  His VP has been in charge of housing placement for the past three months.

  
Ope offers, “You’ve got neighbors on both sides, but his place is still available.  You want to check it out?  I could take you over there.”

 

Tara stands up, drops her crumpled napkin on her plate, looks at Jax overlong.  “Thank you,” she says at last, heart in her voice.  He knows she’s talking about more than just breakfast.  He can only nod.

 

Then she turns to Ope.  “Thanks, Ope.  I appreciate the offer.”

“No problem.”  Turning to Jax, he adds, “You need me for anything special today?”

 

Jax shakes his head.  “I’ll call you if I do.  Go home, spend some time with the kid.”

 

Ope offers a salute to the crew and heads out, Tara close behind.  A minute later, the muffled roar of Ope’s SuperGlide indicates their going.  Jax feels something let go in his chest, and he takes in a deep breath.

 

Dean looks at him from across the table.  “You ready to head out?”

 

“Give me five to shower off the stink.”

 

“I think you mean spooge,” Sack hazards.

  
Jax levels him a killing look and the Prospect pales.  Then Jax breaks out grinning.  “Don’t get smart, kid, or you’ll be cleaning oil pans until the next apocalypse.”

 

Sack ducks his head to hide his smile and shoves back from the table.  “Told Sally I’d help with roofing the back porch.”

 

Kerry, Vita, and Mouse talk about heading over to the community garden to weed and tend the rows. Chibs and Bobby have a security meeting with Sheriff Hale’s people. 

 

He doesn’t jinx them by thinking it’s a well-oiled machine, but as tips his head back under the hot water to sluice suds out of his hair, Jax can’t help but feel a little proud of his people, of the way everyone chips in with a minimum of bitching to make things work.

 

Dean’s waiting for him, hair wet, collar of his tee-shirt damp, leather hiding whatever the shirt doesn’t cover. 

 

He manages to avoid showing it, but the sight of Dean like this, freshly fucked, eyes smiling, mouth quirked up as he gives Jax an approving once-over—it makes him a little weak, a little wanting.  Sometimes he has to clench his jaw and breathe deep through his teeth to keep from backing Dean into some public corner and fucking him until he gives up the last of what he’s hiding.

 

The direction of his thoughts reflects in his face because Dean’s face changes, shifting into knowing, a darkness in his eyes that says, _Bring it on_ and _I’ll take it_. 

 

Someday, Jax intends to test that challenge.

 

For now, though, there’s work to do.

 

They take the Impala, of course, Dean refusing to ride bitch except in dire emergencies and Jax happy enough to oblige.  He misses his bike, wishes he had more time to get out on the road, but it can’t all be body shots and blow jobs, after all. 

 

Two of the newest of Hale’s guys man the towers, two more are standing ready on the ground, aiming P90s from behind the cover of the gate.

 

Survivalists from Montana who showed up a couple of months back complete with an impressive armory, the dozen or so men and women had made an excellent addition to Charming’s irregular little army.

 

“Anything?” Jax asks Blue, who spits a stream of brown tobacco juice into the dust before answering.

 

“Guy in that group,” jerking his chin in the direction of the group camped to the west of the road in, “Says he knows Dean.  Lady over there in the red says she’s got ‘important information’ and ‘ll only talk to you.”

 

“Thanks, Blue.”  Jax gives Dean a look.  “You want to check out your ‘friend’?  I’ll handle the woman.”

 

“Yeah, sure.”  His voice is laced with derision.  It’s clear he doesn’t believe the guy’s story.  And he shouldn’t.  They’ve had a dozen or more “friends” show up, claiming to be everyone from Dean’s old army buddy to Jax’s long lost cousin Lou from Reno.

 

Nevertheless, Jax keeps half an eye on Dean as he makes his own way over to the other group, three people sharing a white canvas “tent,” multicolor paint splatters clearly indicating the structure’s earlier incarnation.

 

A middle-aged woman is walking out to meet him when he stops, struck by Dean’s posture as he greets a slight, bearded, nervous-looking guy.

 

The woman is talking to him, but Jax isn’t hearing her as he watches Dean embrace the man, step back, shake his head.

 

He tells himself it’s stupid to be suddenly uneasy, but his stomach flips nervously anyway.

 

“Are you Jax Teller?”  The woman’s tone suggests she’s getting tired of being ignored. 

 

He turns his eyes to her only with great effort.

 

“Yeah, I’m Jax.  Welcome to Charming.  You know about the test?”

 

He usually asks this first, before getting into who’s in the party and what they might contribute to the life of the growing town.  Sometimes people decide they’d rather take their chances with more temporal dangers than risk divine—and permanent—punishment.

 

“Yes, and we’ve all prepared.”  She says the last word like it means something, and Jax manages to focus on the little group.  The woman is dressed in well-tended, if stained, clothes, her graying brown hair smoothed back into a pony tail, held in place by a plain rubber band.  In the doorway of the tent behind her, Jax sees another woman, maybe thirty, dishwater blonde, bloodshot blue eyes, and beside her a little girl, no older than eight or nine, white-blonde hair tucked behind her ears, eyes darting to him and then shyly away.

 

When she catches him looking back, she ducks behind the woman, who puts a hand on her head and offers Jax the shadow of a smile.

 

Then he sees the cross, a plain wooden thing, hanging from the improvised tent pole.

 

“You aren’t zealots, are you?”  Six months ago, Jax wouldn’t have known to ask that question, but they’ve had their share of religious rabble-rousers through, thinking Charming was some kind of divine way-station designed to gather the chosen.

 

He prefers his citizens to be a little more flexible and a lot less judgmental.

 

“I’m not going to quote Psalms at you if that’s what you’re worried about,” the woman answers him, something unyielding in her voice.

  
Jax reassesses her but doesn’t yet relent.  “What can you do?”

 

“I can tell you you’re in a heck of a lot of trouble,” she answers.

 

Jax says nothing, just stares until she huffs out an annoyed breath and answers.

 

“I’m Joan, and I’m a seamstress by trade.”  She holds up her hands, fingers out, and he sees the signs of her profession in the calluses and scars.  “Alison was a farmer’s wife.  She can plant, weed, harvest, can, and cook just about anything that might grow hereabouts.  Delilah’s her daughter.  She’s a good girl, can read, write, and do math.  We’ve been teaching her on the road.”

 

She seems on the level.  None of them appear threatening, and if they’re hiding something, chances are they won’t be for long. 

 

Lightning makes a great lie detector.

 

“Come ahead.”

 

“Don’t you want to hear what I have to say about the danger, Mr. Teller?”

 

“After you’ve passed the test.”

 

He sees her understand him, sees the set of her chin, the surety of her steady gaze.  The other two, even Delilah, seem equally sure.

 

“We’ll be along presently,” she says primly, turning away.  He watches them go back into the tent together, kneel down in the dirt, bow their heads, and pray.

 

God save him from the faithful. 

 

He stops his head in mid-shake when he sees Dean crossing the road with the skinny guy in tow.  He sees three other people from the group Dean vetted heading for the road.  He’s only half-listening for thunder when Dean says, “Jax.  This is Chuck Shurley.  He’s a prophet of the Lord.”

 

“Uh, _ex_ -prophet,” the man says, holding out a begrimed hand.

  
Jax shakes it, giving the guy a little more pressure than is strictly necessary.

  
Chuck winces and draws his hand away.  “Good shake,” he says, obsequious, eyes going to Dean for help.

 

“I knew Chuck before.”

 _Before_ is one of those words that has taken on new meaning since the almost-end.  It means before the world went to hell.  Before loved ones turned into ravenous, infected beasts.  Before demons walked the earth and the earth cracked beneath their blistering steps.

 

Before Dean killed the devil his brother and died and rose from the dead.

 

Every shadow Dean’s ever worn, and maybe a couple of new ones, darken his face.  It’s like Chuck is taller than Dean and somehow blocking the sun.  Jax wants to tell Chuck to get the hell away from Charming, but he knows he can’t.

 

“Ex-prophet, huh?” Jax asks, eyes narrowed.  He has the unreasonable desire to see the guy squirm, and then he feels a little shitty, since Chuck is clearly afraid and unsuited for post-apocalypse survival.  _Though he’s gotten this far_ , Jax considers, looking harder at the slight man.

 

“Uh, yeah, about that.  See, I don’t really get the visions anymore. Just…static.  Dreams.  Fragments.  Mostly noise.  I can’t tell you what’s going to happen next or any of that.  The last real picture I saw was Dean and S—“

 

He stops himself, eyes going wide, face draining of what little color was there.  It must be Jax’s imagination that his bloodshot eyes get even redder.

 

  1. He’s clenching his teeth. 



 

“We don’t talk about that,” Jax offers evenly, like a friendly warning about wet paint.

 

Chuck bobs his head, swallows visibly, chokes out, “S-sorry.  Right.  No talking.”

  
“To anyone,” Jax adds for clarity. 

 

“It’s better people just forget about it,” Dean manages, though the effort to string words together and get them out is obvious.  Slowly, slowly, he stretches out the fingers of his bunched fists and lets go of a breath.

 

“I don’t know about that,” Chuck answers, suddenly vivid, like he’s drunk or out of his mind.  “People need stories.  And the ones they tell about you guys…well, they’re golden, man.  You’re heroes.”

 

Dean turns abruptly, boot making a grating sound against the broken edge of the road, and strides toward the gate as quickly as he can.  Jax knows what it costs for Dean to hide his limp, and it makes him angrier when he says, “You’re the big guy’s bitch, you’ll probably pass the test.”

 

Chuck shrugs, helpless and small beside Jax, his eyes fixed on Dean like he’s watching his last, best hope disappear. 

 

All at once, though, the ghost of a man draws himself up and levels a look at Jax.  “One thing you learn as God’s bitch:  Don’t take anything for granted.  Dean learned that the hard way.  So did I.”

 

And he walks away, off toward the gate.  Jax hears footsteps behind him and tears his eyes away from the straight-backed, steady walk of the former prophet to find Joan, Alison, and Delilah standing in a close line, faces serene.

 

He has the perverse urge to introduce them to Chuck and suggest just what a prick their God seems to be sometimes.  Maybe tell them about the time he met a douchebag angel.

 

It makes him tired, though, the flare of hot anger, and instead he just sighs and gestures them ahead of him.

 

“Good luck,” he says as they pass.  Usually, he doesn’t say anything.  It isn’t luck, after all, that determines who passes and who fails the awful test of judgment.

                                                                                                                

He realizes he hasn’t heard a single peal of thunder yet, that all the others, Chuck and the three he came with, must have already gotten through.  Realizes he’s holding his breath as the two road-worn women and the shy, quiet little girl take their place on the ash-stained, ruined roadway where God fingers the sinful.

 

Nothing happens, and he lets out his breath.

 

“Alright,” he says to himself, more a reminder to keep moving ahead than an affirmation of anything good.   Then he squares his shoulders and walks back through the gate to see about settling in their newest citizens.

 

Dean and Chuck are waiting by the Impala.  They aren’t talking to each other, and Jax can see tension in every line of his lover’s body, but when he raises an eyebrow as if to say, _Your move_ , Dean answers.

 

“I called Opie, got Chuck a place up near the hospital.  Take us over?”

 

“Sure.  Just give me a minute.”

 

The three others who came in with Chuck are being led to a pickup by one of Hale’s guys.  Joan, Alison, and Delilah are waiting a considerate distance away.

 

“Let me call my VP, see about getting you a place.  You have to check in at the hospital.  Docs’ll examine you.  We’ll get someone to take you.”

 

Ope must have the walkie at hand because his deep voice is coming through clear a second after Jax sends the code click.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Got three who need a house.”

 

“Pine or Clawson?”

 

Pine’s got the benefit of a little park at one end, which Delilah might like.  But Clawson’s closer to the center of town.  He puts the choice to the women, and Alison actually tears up, lower lip trembling, hands tight on her daughter’s shoulder.

Joan smiles at him in a way that makes him vaguely ashamed of the things he’s been thinking and answers, “I think we’d like to be near a park, don’t you, Delilah?”

  
The little girl nods, tucks her head against her mother’s hip.

 

“Pine, Ope.”

 

“Jason’ll be there in ten.”

 

Jason is one of Charming’s original members.  A kid when it all started to come apart, he’d grown up fast and well, and Hale had deputized him almost a year ago.

 

“Out.” 

 

“Thank you, Mr. Teller,” Joan says.  “We have nothing to offer but our hands and our prayers, but we won’t make you sorry you took us in.”

 

Jax can’t help but smile at that.  “Might be the other way around come Saturday night.  Some of the guys get pretty rowdy.”

 

“As long as there’s a church open on Sunday morning, we don’t much worry about what our neighbors do before and after.”

 

“We’ve got four churches and six pastors.”

 

Alison sniffles audibly and Joan takes a ragged blue bandana-style handkerchief from her pocket, handing it to the woman as she puts an arm around her. 

 

“Are you a praying man, Mr. Teller?”

 

“Oh, I pray all the time.”  He hides his smirk by squinting into the sun.  He doesn’t think the Lord’s name chanted over Dean’s sweating back is the kind of prayer she’s talking about.

 

“We’ll pray for you,” Joan answers, like she’s seen inside his head.  “And for Charming.  I fear there’s trouble coming this way, Mr. Teller.”

 

“It’s Jax.  What trouble, Joan?”

 

“We came from just east of Boise.  Met a lot of good people along the way.  A lot of bad ones, too.  But good or bad, people were all talking about one thing:  Charming.  People seem to think you’ve got some kind of golden city here, Jax.  And whether it’s hope or faith or greed or evil driving them, there’s a whole lot of people heading this way.”

 

“We can handle it.  We’ve got people working on producing more food.  The water supply is regular.  We’ve got solar power and enough fuel stockpiled to run the generators for a year before rationing.  We’ll be okay.”

 

But Joan is shaking her head, a grim look clouding her blue eyes.  “It’s not feeding new people you have to worry about, Jax.  It’s keeping the ones you’ve already got safe.  There’s an army of Scavengers gathering numbers to come against Charming and take this town.  They want what you’ve got, and they mean to get it by the worst sort of violence.”

 

“Hell, just ‘cause he wasn’t up for the smiting today, Joan, doesn’t mean the big guy’s taking a vacation.”

 

She glances skyward, as though the hand of God might appear to lend credence to her warning.  “Maybe so.  The Lord is all powerful, his hand mighty.  But if a large enough army laid siege to Charming, how would you get in supplies?  And how would all those good people I met along the road make it safely to your gates?”

 

“If we believed every rumor off the road, we’d—“

 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Teller, but it’s not just a rumor.” 

 

For the first time, Alison speaks, her voice wavering but her tone definite.  “What Joan says is true.  We’ve seen signs of a gathering for a long while now.  Men on motorcycles all heading the same way.  Rough men with rifles on foot talking about what they’re going to do once they get to Charming.  They never saw us because we were good at hiding, and we heard them clear as I’m standing here.  Something bad is coming to Charming, Mr. Teller.”

 

“No offense, lady, but we’ve been there and done that.  Got the scars to prove it.  Whatever might be coming can’t be worse than what we already put down.”

 

Preoccupied by the women’s words, Jax hadn’t heard Dean come up behind him.  He stops beside Jax now, and Jax can see in his profile the self-confident smirk he sometimes puts on to annoy people. 

 

Jax appreciates the “we,” but he knows as well as Dean that he doesn’t deserve to be included in the honor roll.  Jax didn’t do anything but watch his mother and his lover die. 

 

“You’re the one,” Alison says, her tone changed, hushed and reverent.

 

Joan reaches out a hand as if to touch Dean and then startles like the motion was involuntary. 

 

“We goin’?” Dean asks, impatience ratcheting up to rudeness in his voice.  He never likes the hero-worship, especially not when it sounds like prayer.

 

“Jason’s coming down to take them to their new house.”

 

Dean departs as abruptly as he’d arrived, and Jax glances over his shoulder to see him settle against the Impala’s fender next to Chuck.

 

Jax turns back to Joan, wondering if she’s going to expect him to apologize for Dean’s behavior.  Since he has no intention of doing that, he’s glad when she asks, “Is that the young man we’re waiting for?”

 

Indeed, Jason’s patrol Jeep is a couple of blocks away and closing.

 

“Thanks for the information, Joan.  We’ll look into it.”

 

Jax had had to add stock phrases like that to his lexicon after a year as de facto leader of Charming.  This time, though, he actually means it.  She’s not the first one to make mention of an apparent Scavenger summit.  They’ve known about Salt Lake City for a long time, had hoped it would be haven enough for the sorry excuses for human beings left over after the apocalypse.  Jax guesses it was inevitable that the bastards would get greedy for what they couldn’t have, though, and wouldn’t be content to stay in Utah.

 

Suppressing a sigh and feeling suddenly a lot older than his thirty years, Jax watches the three women get into the Jeep, offers a little wave as they drive off, and then returns to the Impala.  Chuck is just climbing in the back, Dean lowering himself into the passenger seat.

 

“St. Thomas first,” Jax says, not really asking.  They make everyone go through a health check before they get settled.  Well, everyone except Tara…but she’s a doctor herself, and besides, Jax made the damned rule, he can break it if he wants to.

 

Dean just grunts an affirmative sound.  The ride is otherwise silent. 

 

In St. Thomas’ foyer, Jax meets the three who’d come with Chuck:  a middle-aged couple named Randall who farmed in Iowa before the apocalypse and an old man named Grady who they’d picked up along the way. 

 

The old man impresses Jax on some level he can’t immediately name, but he’s come to respect the intuitive leaps his mind seems to take since God gifted him with leadership of the last bastion of civilization on the planet.

 

Grady’s face is lined with age and care, his skin leathery from years out of doors, eyes squinted to narrow slots in his face.  His gnarled finger joints and the broken red skin of his hands attest to a lifetime of hard work.

 

But his back is unbent, his shoulders still broad, his grip still firm when he introduces himself to Jax.

 

“What’d you do before?” Jax asks.

 

Grady smiles.  “Farmed, mostly.  Some hunting.”

 

Jax cuts his eyes to Dean.  Dean’s face reveals a dawning suspicion, something that must have escaped him at the gate in his distraction over the unexpected presence of Chuck.

 

“You’re a hunter,” Dean says.

 

“I just said as much, son,” Grady answers.  He’s got a low, gravel-rough voice and a direct, pinning stare.

 

“We’re not talkin’ elk,” Dean persists.

 

Grady smirks.  “Ay-yep.”

 

The good-old-boy, backcountry accent doesn’t fool Jax.

 

Dean either, judging by the big grin that breaks over his face, driving away the darkness it had been wearing since Chuck’s appearance.

 

“You know John Winchester or Bobby Singer?”

 

“Winchester only by reputation.  But Singer, yeah.  I had some dealings with him.  Good man, though ornery as a cornered polecat even on a good day.”

 

Dean laughs, a different kind of laugh than Jax has ever heard, and it makes Dean sound like a stranger.

 

“You’re the one who saved Chuck’s ass.”  It’s not a question that requires an answer.

 

For his part, the ex-prophet has subsided onto an aqua hard-plastic chair and is apparently engrossed in a four-year-old issue of _Newsweek_.  The cover story is about 2012 prophecies.

 

“I happened to be in the right place at the right time to get Shurley out of a jam with a couple dozen demons.” 

 

It’s the same sort of self-effacing bullshit Jax still hears from Dean.  He gives a mental roll of his eyes.  Was there a hunter’s handbook somewhere that laid out the rules of stoic self-denial?

 

“And you brought him all the way here?”  Dean’s question is a reasonable one.  Seems unlikely the lone-wolf hunter type would take such a burden of responsibility on himself if there weren’t something else going on.

 

“Said he knew you.  And I figured it was worth the trip to meet the last of the Winchesters.”

 

Dean’s smile thins, the skin around his eyes tightening, but the cropped bark of a laugh covers his discomfort.

  
Grady’s eyes see it, though, and Jax swears internally.  The last thing he needs is another goddamned paranoid, overly observant hunter in town.  One’s enough.

 

“I guess my reputation precedes me.”

 

“Ay-yep.  You could say that.  Evil things like to chatter, human as much as monsters.”

 

“What’ve you heard?” 

 

“Army moving down from Utah made up of the scum of the earth, the cockroaches too hard to kill.  Headin’ here, by the looks of it.  Want to sully up the last, best place people have.”

 

“Sounds about right.”  Dean’s voice is grave, dropped a few on the scale, but when Jax looks at him, he sees in Dean’s eyes a resolve that he’s been missing since he came back to Charming.

 

Jax figures it’s time to commandeer the conversation before it devolves into a strategy session complete with maps, journals, and a lot of hunter mumbo-jumbo.  The waiting room isn’t exactly private.

 

“We can talk about this after you’re settled in,” Jax interrupts, forestalling further alarmist talk in favor of reminding Dean of why they came to St. Thomas.

 

Sarah, the nurse who’d put up with Dean after his unfortunate human torch incident before the final battle, chooses that moment to bustle out to them, clipboard in hand, harried smile on her face.

 

“So many,” she says by way of greeting.

Jax guesses seven new people at once is unusual for a town that up until a few months ago was shrinking slow but sure. 

 

“And I hear there’s another who hasn’t been in yet?”  She offers it in that lilting way people have of reminding you that they’re reminding you of something.

 

Right.  Tara.

 

Jax nods.  “I’ll get her over here as soon as I can.”

 

“Good.  Well, then, let’s see about getting all of you processed.  Janice!”

 

From the office behind the reception desk, an overweight girl in candy-striper’s white appears with a stack of clipboards and a fistful of pens.

 

“Let’s get you set up over here, okay?”  She says in the falsely cheerful voice of a burgeoning bureaucrat.

 

Grady suffers himself to be led away after a terse, “I’ll catch up with you later,” directed at Dean, who answers, “Looking forward to it.”

 

Chuck is working his way through a seemingly endless series of check-boxed questions when Dean approaches him.  Jax pretends interest in Sarah’s inane chatter about intake and inoculations, but he’s actually listening to the hunter and the ex-prophet.

 

“I’ll look into getting you a place and come back in a couple of hours for you, alright?”

 

“Yeah.”  The man’s voice is reedy with anxiety. 

 

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.  You’re safe now.  Charming’s safe.”

 

“I don’t think it is, Dean.  These dreams I have, the fragments?  They aren’t good.”

 

“How ‘not good’ we talkin’ here, Chuck?  I mean, we already had the apocalypse.”

 

Chuck shifts audibly, the hard seat creaking in protest under him.

 

“I see…blood.  I hear people screaming.  Sometimes I can smell…I don’t know, this awful stench, like demons leave.  Like death.  I smell death, Dean.”

 

What Dean’s snort of laughter lacks in humor, his following words make up for in scorn.  “Well, at least you don’t see dead people.”

 

“I’m serious, man.  Something bad’s coming.  I can feel it.”

 

“You said your divine mojo’s been on the fritz for a year, right?”

 

“Yeah, but—“

 

“Then maybe what you’re having is nightmares, Chuck.  Good old-fashioned sheet-soaking screamers.  Get used to it.  We all have ‘em.  It’s the post-apocalypse’s answer to the movies.”

“Yeah, well the director sucks,” Chuck answers, voice a little less thin with worry.

 

“But the special effects rock,” Dean adds, slapping his friend on the shoulder by the sounds of it.

 

Jax chooses that moment to dismiss Sarah with a curt, “Thanks,” and turn around to join the conversation.  From the impatient sound behind him, he thinks she’s probably pissed.  Too bad.  There’s got to be some benefit to being king.

 

“You about ready to hit the road?” He asks Dean.  The foyer is filled with afternoon light, and Jax has things to do before dark.

 

One of those things might be Dean.

 

“I’m going to call Ope again, see about a house for Chuck.  I’ll meet you back at the clubhouse later on, after I get him settled in.”

 

“You sure?”  The clubhouse is a long walk from the hospital, and Dean’s not real mobile these days.  Jax doesn’t make the observations aloud, but by Dean’s defensive response, he hears them anyway.

 

“I’ll be home by curfew, Dad, don’t worry.  Wouldn’t want to get grounded.”

 

Jax gives him a filthy leer, deliberately misinterpreting Dean’s implication, and Chuck makes a gasping squeak, eyes darting back to his clipboard when he realizes he’s been caught eavesdropping.

 

Dean returns Jax’s leer and then some, his face smoothing out, though, when someone approaches from behind Jax.

 

Jax turns to see Tara standing there, newly washed hair tucked neatly up in a bun, slim body clothed in scrubs at least two sizes too large.

 

“You workin’ already?”

 

Tara nods and shrugs.  “They needed the help and I need the distraction.”

 

“Don taking care of you?” Jax asks, referring to the retired Navy doctor they’d put in charge of the hospital.

 

“Yeah, he’s been great.  Hi, Dean,” she adds.

  
“Tara.  Hey, could you do me a favor?”

 

Jax tries to hide his surprise at the way Dean turns on the charm.  He forgets that Dean can be like this. 

 

“Sure,” Tara says, her own surprise poorly hidden.

 

“This is my friend Chuck.  Could you give him the once-over so I can take him out house-hunting?”

 

“Uh…” She hesitates, eyes going to the crowd of people on the other side of the waiting room, to Sarah and Janine flitting from group to group, checking forms.  “Sure,” she answers, obviously squelching her misgivings.  She puts her hand out for Chuck’s clipboard.

For his part, Chuck’s staring at Tara like she’s some sort of divine apparition.  And Chuck knows angels.

 

“I’ll wait here,” Dean says, sitting and picking up the _Newsweek_ Chuck had abandoned.  “Humor issue,” he notes to Jax, flashing the headline about 2012.

 

“Yeah,” Jax laughs.  “Okay, man.  You need me, you know where I’ll be.”

 

It’s Wednesday, which means afternoon open forum at the courthouse.  Citizens bring their grievances to air, questions they want answered, and Jax, Hale, and a citizen-appointed council try to deal with them.

 

“See you for dinner, then?”  Dean holds Jax’s eyes as he asks, speaking with more than words.  The look says, _We good?_

 

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jax answers, his eyes promising that dessert will be much better than the meal itself.

 

As he leaves the hospital, Jax notices that the Impala has gotten dusty from the day’s travels, decides to turn her over to Sack for some tender loving care.  She’s Dean’s baby, and though Jax doesn’t appreciate her the way his lover does, he knows what she means to Dean.  He’ll swing by the garage, drop her off, pick up his bike.

 

If he’s lucky and the meeting doesn’t run long, he might even get a little ride in out on the open road before the duties of his office call him back to the clubhouse.

 

Wednesday’s spaghetti night, the whole crew gathering for a meal to discuss the issues that come up at the meeting.  He has to be there.  No saying he has to be on time, though.

 

Smiling at the idea, feeling rebellious, Jax pulls out of the hospital lot and feels the tug of the big engine urging him to speed.  He saves that feeling for later, though, and drives more or less sedately back to the garage.

 

He’ll take it out on his bike first and Dean after.

 

Those two thoughts might be why he’s in a particularly good mood heading up the steps of the courthouse.

 

*****

 

 

 _If I learned anything from my years of hunting, it was not to underestimate monsters or people.  Or maybe I should say, not to forget that people can be worse monsters than anything hell pukes up.  But they can also be better than I ever expected.  It’s the good way people can surprise you that gave me hope, kept me going even when things got bad.  And, too, I think it’s why the angels never really understood us._ (The Book of Sons and Brothers 7:18-22)

 

He can’t focus on Mayan predictions of apocalypse.  Every time he reads about worldwide famine and geological upheaval, it makes him laugh.  They had no fucking clue what was coming.

 

Also, they were off by a few years.

 

Tara must fast-track Chuck through the usual tests because he’s done in half an hour, still pulling on his holey hoodie and smiling nervously at the doctor, who gives Dean a strange look and says, “He’s all yours,” before turning to two women and a little girl sitting at the other side of the waiting room.

 

“You got any booze?” Chuck says when they’re through the glass doors and out into the warm, breezy afternoon.

 

Dean laughs.  “Guess some things haven’t changed.”

 

“No, it’s not—.  I don’t _need_ it.  I’d just like to celebrate, you know?  Share a drink.  Who’d have thought that _I’d_ make it through the apocalypse?  Not to mention you.  The odds against you were…well, you know.  I mean, you did die.  What was that like, by the way?  Was it weird?  Oh, right.  You’d done it before.  Ooh, you didn’t go to hell again, did you?  ‘cause that would suck.  Did you—“

 

“Chuck.”

 

“—see Castiel?  I thought I heard that Cas had been around.  Is he still—“

 

“Chuck!”

 

The ex-prophet actually jumps a little before stumbling to a halt like he’d tripped over his wagging tongue.

 

“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head sheepishly.  “It’s just been a really long time since I could talk to anyone about…you know.  The visions and…stuff.  And a lot of shit went down that—.  But you probably don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Dean thinks that’s an understatement. 

 

“This okay?”

 

Chuck gives Dean a confused look before following Dean’s eyes to the little ranch tucked onto a city plot, orange tree half-picked in the front yard, concrete driveway broken but useable.  It’s one of the addresses Opie gave Dean.

 

“Yeah.  Yeah, this is—.  Do I have a roommate, or is it all mine?  I mean, I don’t mind sharing, I just—“

 

“Chuck, relax.  It’s all yours.  We have enough housing for now.  If people need to start taking in roomies, I’ll let you know.”

They walk up the driveway to a narrow walk made of cracked pavers and onto the concrete stoop.  The porch overhang is listing, one support starting to rot at the base.

 

“It’ll need some fixing up.  I’ll give you the tour of Charming tomorrow, and you can see people about what you’ll need here.  Maybe get you a job.”

 

Reaching to the top of the doorframe, Dean feels for the ubiquitous nail and finds a key on the green plastic tag that indicates the house is available.  Their system isn’t sophisticated, but so far it’s worked. 

 

A town policed by outlaw bikers and survivalists doesn’t have a significant crime rate.

 

Dean hands the key to Chuck, whose eyes have widened to comical proportions. 

 

“Really?”

 

“You think I’m standing here for my health?”

 

“No, it’s just… .  I haven’t had a home in almost four years.  When the shit hit the fan, demons kept coming for me, and I had to stay on the move.”

 

“I thought you had an archangel guarding your ass.”

 

“I did.  Until I didn’t anymore.  Still don’t know what happened for sure, but I think he must’ve gotten killed.  Or busy.  Or something.  Anyway, when Grady found me I was holed up in an abandoned silver mine in Colorado.”

 

They’re inside by now, Chuck pausing just past the entryway to take in the modest living room, furnished the way the occupants had left it, couch facing a picture window covered with lightweight beige drapes, television a blank eye looking back at them.  To the left is a kitchen, past it a tiny dining room.

 

“You’ve got two bedrooms and a bath.  Crawl space overhead for storage.”

 

Chuck laughs and holds his hands out from his sides.  “You’re looking at my earthly possessions.”

 

Dean jerks his head toward the kitchen.  “Should be a welcome basket on the counter.”

 

Dean follows Chuck in, gives him a second to get himself together as he rummages through uncooked pasta, homemade jarred sauce, a bath towel and basic cosmetics, clean sweatpants and a tee-shirt, even a copy of the bible.  The Ladies Help Guild stocks all the open houses with non-perishables, but he doesn’t tell Chuck that. 

 

The ex-prophet’s hands tremble as he holds each item, and Dean clears his throat and turns his back to lean against the doorframe and stare out at the shadowy living room.

 

“I’m sorry about Sam,” Dean hears, and he’s glad his back is turned because hearing the name hurts, drives a spike through his chest and makes his breath come short.

  
No one at the clubhouse, not even Jax, says Sam’s name. 

 

At last, when he’s pretty sure he can say it without his voice shaking, Dean answers, “Thanks, Chuck.”

“He’s in a good place, Dean.  I know he’s in a good place.”

 

Dean pushes off the jamb and paces into the living room, stopping to part the drapes and look out on the front yard, orange in the light of the slowly sinking sun.

 

Chuck must have followed him partway because his voice is closer when it comes.  “I saw him once more, Dean, in a vision, after you—.  After.  He was happy.  At peace.”

 

“Don’t.”  It’s all he can say around the throttling ache in his throat.

 

“I’m not—“

 

“Don’t lie to me.  Don’t you…”  He leaves it, unable and unwilling to finish the threat.

 

“Okay.  Sorry.”

  
He hears the ex-prophet move away, hears him open a door further down the hall, then another, exploring his new home.  Dean takes a deep breath, eyes blurring on the orange tree, and marshals his feelings, telling himself he’s already a cripple, doesn’t need to be a pussy, too.

 

Infinite minutes of silence later, Chuck comes back, clearing his throat ostentatiously and brandishing two glasses and a bottle of whiskey when Dean finally turns around.

 

“That wasn’t in the welcome basket,” Dean observes.  Eleanor Mitchell runs the Ladies Help Guild, and she doesn’t believe in booze.

 

“Found it in a cupboard under the sink.”

 

He turns the label so Dean can see, and Dean whistles. 

 

“Wonder how the cleaners missed that.”

 

When things had started to go south in the world, Jax and his crew had gone through empty houses and gathered any supplies they’d need, clearing out cupboards, refrigerators, pantries, closets, medicine cabinets.  An almost-full bottle of JD wouldn’t have escaped their notice.

 

Deciding to ignore the niggling voice in his head suggesting it’s some kind of sign that Chuck the ex-prophet finds a bottle of Jack in an otherwise empty house, he clinks his full tumbler against Chuck’s, repeats the ex-prophet’s falsely cheerful, “To survival,” and shotguns it.

 

It does a slow burn down to his empty belly, makes him light-headed and then smoothes through his veins.

 

_Oh, yeah._

 

Regretting that he hasn’t got more time, Dean sets down his tumbler with a thunk and straightens up.  “I’ve gotta get goin’, Chuck.  I’ll be by tomorrow, take you on that tour, introduce you around.”

 

“What time?”  His voice is eager, almost child-like, and Dean feels a pang of misgiving.  Despite what he knows is true of the little man, Dean finds it hard to remember the guy can take care of himself.

“Mid-morning. House doesn’t have electric yet.  We’ll get you on the generator grid tomorrow.  Meantime, there should be a lantern and kerosene in the garage.”

 

The crew that sets up houses for habitation has it down to a science.

 

“Great.  This is…great.  Thanks again, Dean.  I can’t thank you enough.  I just—“

 

“It’s fine.  See you tomorrow.”

 

“See ya!”  Chuck stands in his open front door waving as Dean makes his way back to the sidewalk.  When he gets to the corner of the street five houses down, Dean looks back to see Chuck still standing there, arm up but motionless, like he’s been frozen that way.

 

Shaking his head, he turns the corner toward the clubhouse and tries not to think about what Chuck said about Sam.

 

He’s mostly unsuccessful, so far gone in recollection he doesn’t hear her until she’s right on top of him, reaching out a hand toward his shoulder to turn him around.

  
He grabs her wrist out of reflex, backs her into a municipal maple taking up most of the space between sidewalk and street.

 

Eyes wide, she stammers, “Dean.  It’s me.  Wendy.  From the hospital.  Remember?”

 

Wendy.  Right.

 

“Sorry.  You startled me.”

 

“I guess,” she says, a little hiccup of fear laughter spilling out of her as he lets her go and backs away and she straightens up.

 

“So…” he starts, feeling around for what to say after accidental near-assault.

 

“How are you?”  She asks it like she doesn’t really want a truthful answer, which is fine with Dean, since his head is still sloughing off the dark tar of memory, and he’s pretty damned sure she doesn’t want any of that shit in her ear.

 

“Good.  I’m good.”

 

“And Jax?” 

 

He notices the shift in tone as she says Jax’s name and suppresses an urge to bare his teeth in a parody of a smile.

 

“Jax is good, too.”

 

“That’s…great,” she finishes lamely.  “Tell him I said hello, okay?  It was good to see you.”

 

She’s backing away, catches her heel on a crack in the concrete, steadies herself with an embarrassed laugh.  “I’ve gotta get to work.  Hospital,” she says, like he might have forgotten since the last time she said it a minute ago.

 

Reluctantly, she gives Dean her back, and by the way she shoots glances over her shoulder as she goes, it’s obvious he’s making her deeply uncomfortable.  She probably thinks he wants to jump her or something.

 

And it’s true, Dean’s staring at her, even assessing her body, but not for himself.  He’s thinking about how Jax could have that ass, have the sunny, sleek girl with the wide mouth and enormous eyes, have Wendy in his bed whenever he wanted her, uncomplicated, happy to be there, not waking him nightly with screams.

 

Sick of his head, of the places it takes him all the time these days, Dean starts to hum _Death Magnetic_ to himself, glad that the end times gave him something worth remembering, anyway.

 

He’s halfway through the title track, complete with air drums, when he hears the sound of voices pitched for battle from down the alley to his left.

 

Well, battle by playground standards, anyway.

 

Three big kids surround a fourth smaller one who’s already bloodied, a slow trickle of crimson from the corner of his mouth.  As Dean watches, one of the three swings wild, but the victim, a lithe little long-haired kid, ducks it easily, slides in snake-quick and kidney punches the kid, and is back out before the would-be attacker can straighten up.

 

The second of the bigger kids grabs at him, gets a fistful of hair, yanks hard, pulling the littler one backward.  He manages to keep his feet, but by then the third one is on him, both fists landing body blows, mouth open like a panting animal, words spewing that Dean can’t hear, but he knows they’re ugly.

 

Dean steps into the alley, makes no effort to hide his approach, but keeps his hands out to his sides so they can see he comes in peace.  He puts on a one-of-the-guys smile to disarm them.

  
“Hey,” he says when he’s close enough to see that the three bigger kids are all in their mid-teens, the smaller one no more than eleven or twelve.  “Pick on someone your own size.”

 

“What, like you?” Sneers the tallest of the three, a red-headed, freckled kid with a reversed baseball cap and baggy jeans.

 

“Yeah, you think you can take us, gimp?”  This is the second, a chubby, brown-haired boy whose tee-shirt doesn’t quite cover the blubber at his waistband.

 

“You and what army?” The third one says predictably.

 

Both their victim and Dean give him identical looks of scorn.

 

“I don’t need an army.  Just two things.”

 

“Your fists?” Freckles asks, managing to make it sound like a dirty word.

 

The other two snicker in an equally predictable chorus.  And in fact, Dean would like to smack the smirks from their faces with his open hands, but his knee is killing him from the walk this far, and he makes a point of not beating the shit out of kids if he can avoid it.

 

“Nope,” Dean says, reaching one hand behind his back.  “Smith and Wesson,” he adds casually, pulling out his gun. 

 

Obviously, threatening them with firearms is a much more responsible choice.

 

“You wouldn’t,” Freckles dares, but he sounds uncertain.  The other two are already edging away, herding up and trying to hide behind each other.

 

“I might.”  Dean smiles the way he does when he’s thinking about killing evil things, a look that’s been known to make grown men weep and beg.

 

It works its magic this time, too.

 

When the three are just the fleeting ghosts of their sneaker soles flapping on pavement, Dean turns to the kid who has stood his ground through it all.

 

Dean stows his gun while inspecting the kid’s face without touching him, and the kid looks right back, chin up defiantly.

 

“What’d you do to piss them off?” 

 

The kid grimaces like he’s going to smart-mouth and then apparently thinks better of it.  “Guess they don’t like Indians.”

 

“You sure that’s all it was?”

 

The kid shrugs, and Dean recognizes an achingly familiar mulish expression in the boy’s bright eyes.

 

“Who are you, kid?” 

 

“Name’s Sam.” 

 

Dean manages not to flinch, but it’s a close thing.  Not for over a year and then twice in as many hours.  _Gotta be a sign._

 

“But people call me ‘Wince.’”

 

“Wince?”

 

“’cause I used to get these headaches, and I guess I’d squinch my face up.”

 

“Where are those people now?”

 

“Dead.  ‘Cept my brother, Dennis, an’ I don’t know where he is.”

 

“How do you know he’s alive?”  (Dean winces himself, a little.  Used to be he was better at this shit. Sort of.)

 

Wince shrugs.  “I just know.”  There’s evasion there, something the kid’s not saying, but Dean lets it go.  He knows what it’s like to keep secrets.

 

“Where you from, Wince?”

 

Wince waves vaguely in the direction of Arizona.  Dean makes out in his face, now that he’s looking, something of the Hopi, maybe, or the Navajo.  He’s suddenly wistful for red rocks and Sari’s home cooking. 

 

“Where you livin’ here?”

 

Wince gestures vaguely again, from which Dean takes it the kid means the Home, where they keep the orphan kids.

 

“You want to get something to eat, Wince?”

 

He shrugs.

 

“Well don’t let me stop you from getting back to your important business.”

 

Wince looks up at him, finally.  “You’re the one who saved the world, right?”

 

Dean nods tightly.  He hates that.  He can’t even save a little kid without pulling a gun these days.

 

“You’re not much to look at now.”

 

“Yeah, well, you ain’t exactly Dwayne Johnson yourself.”

 

Wince smirks. 

 

“You call me Sam, I’ll have a burger with you.”

 

Dean considers the kid through narrowed eyes for awhile, but he’s gotta give it to the boy—he doesn’t blink, doesn’t shift around, look away, nothing.  Holds Dean’s stare right back.

 

Dean nods, at last. “We’re having spaghetti, actually.  If you can stomach that, we’ve got a deal.”

 

Sam falls in beside Dean, scuffing up dirt with his holey red Chuck Connors.

 

“You taking me to the clubhouse so I can meet Jax?”

 

He says ‘Jax’ like it’s a holy name.

 

Dean can’t help but laugh a little, though it comes out more like a sigh.  “Yeah, sure.”

 

“Cool!”

 

The sky is fading into an orange-purple blur when they arrive at the clubhouse, the rest of the crew already assembled, round tables pushed together in a kind of elongated double helix, big pots of pasta, steaming pots of sauce on the table.

 

Jax is at one end, Piney at the other.  There’s an open space to Jax’s left.  Ope sits on his right.  When Dean walks in, silence falls like a curtain, everyone looking at the kid and at Dean, some with curiosity, some with suspicion. 

 

“Who’s your friend?” 

 

They aren’t supposed to bring outsiders to Wednesday dinner.  It’s a time for talk of things the townspeople don’t need to know about until they need to know about it.

 

But in Dean’s experience, the meal itself is innocent enough, everyone sharing their day, the ups and downs of life on the edge of the end.  He figures he can get rid of the kid when Sam’s eaten, before the talk turns more serious.

 

“This is Sam,” Dean says, hand on the kid’s narrow shoulder.  “Sam, this’s Jax.”

 

Jax’s eyes widen a little at the name, and Dean can see his lover figuring, assessing, gaze tracking from the kid’s features to Dean’s expression and back.

  
“Sam,” Jax says at last, nodding.  “Pull up a chair.”

 

He doesn’t hesitate to settle between Jax and Dean’s empty seat, dragging a barstool over so he’ll be more or less on a level with the men at the table.

 

Bobby laughs, Piney follows, and soon enough the talk is flowing again, ribald remarks regardless of their pint-sized companion, the ordinary shit-talk of a table full of brother bikers.

 

“Where you from, Sam?” Jax asks around a mouthful of bread.

 

“Arizona,” he answers promptly.  Dean snorts a little at Jax’s apparent sway over the kid, Sam spilling answers easily that Dean hadn’t been able to pry out of him at all. 

 

“What you doin’ in Charming?  No trouble on the reservation, I hope.”

 

Sam shakes his head, licks sauce from the corner of his mouth.  “Nah, things there are good.  I came lookin’ for my brother, but he’s not here.  And then Sally asked me to stay there a while and help out, so I thought,” and his _why not_ shrug finishes the sentence.

 

“Who’s your brother?”

 

“’s name’s Dennis Weaver.  He’s sixteen.”

 

“Why would you think he was here?”  Jax’s question seems innocent enough, but the reaction it raises is anything but.

  
Sam’s eyes show tension at the corners, and his hand tightens convulsively on the fork, tines clattering against the mostly empty plate. He bluffs his way through his alarm, but they’ve both seen it, exchanging a look over the kid’s head.

 

  1. Figure he’ll show up.”   His tone tries for casual dismissal but falls far short, into the territory of worried and secretive.



 

“But you’re sure he’s alive?” Dean pushes, throwing in a detail from their earlier talk that Jax wouldn’t have known about.

 

Sam just nods and blows out an annoyed breath, like he’s tired of being interrogated.

 

Jax asks, “Why?”  And there’s nothing cajoling about the question.  There’s a hard edge to it that says Jax will be answered.  It gives Dean a hot spike of desire in his core to hear that tone, and he has to concentrate on swallowing to keep from choking over the sudden quickening of his breath.

 

The fight seems to drain out of Sam.  He stares at his plate, fork drooping at the edge of it in his loose grip.  There’s a stubborn set to his jaw still, but as Dean watches, the kid seems to decide he can’t escape answering.

 

“Sometimes I get these headaches.  They’re bad.  And sometimes I see things, like…things happening to my brother.  Or to other people I know.  Last one I had, Dennis was in it.  He was in trouble, but he was alive.”

 

Jax opens his mouth for a follow-up, but Dean’s there before him.  “These things you see come true later, right?  Like a vision of the future?”

 

Conversation all around the table has ground to a halt, a conspicuous and uneasy quiet falling over the room.

 

Dean knows they’re all looking at him, can practically feel the weight of Opie’s judgment—the club VP has never been comfortable with the supernatural items on Dean’s resumé of deadly skills—but he has eyes only for the little boy beside him.

 

For Sam.  Who has visions that bring headaches.  And who’s looking back at him like Dean has thrown him an unlooked for lifeline in an otherwise killing storm.

 

He nods slowly, a fearful hope lighting his eyes.  “Yeah,” he says at last, so low only Dean and Jax must hear it.

 

“When’d you see Dennis last?”  Dean says ‘see’ in the way he means it, like code between the two of them.

 

Sam answers more confidently, “Two weeks ago.  He—.  My brother got in with some people, some bad people.  And they’re…I think he was trying to get away from them, but they know.”

 

“Know what, Sam?”

 

It’s one question too many.  The kid will talk about himself if he has to, but he’s not betraying anything about his brother.  That much is clear by the set of his mouth and a painfully familiar look of defiance in his brown eyes.

Dean nods like Sam’s answered him anyway.  “Okay.  Tell you what, Sam.  I’m gonna call Sally, see if she can come get you.  But tomorrow, I’ll swing by the Home and we’ll talk some more.  I’ll take you out for ice cream, since we’ve got to get to business here and you’re going to have to miss dessert.  Sound good?”

 

Sam’s smile is part relief, part anticipation.  Dean sees the kid’s eyes go to Jax uncertainly.

 

Jax smiles and offers the kid a low five, which the kid returns enthusiastically.

  
“Thanks for dinner,” he says, jumping down from the bar stool and returning it to its place.

  
Conversation has started up around the table again, the crew cleaning the last of their plates as Bobby rises and starts collecting dirty dishes.

 

Chibs, who’d risen to use the landline, hangs up the phone and says, “Sally’s sending Alex.  He’ll be here in ten minutes.  She was worried about you.”  Chibs adds the last with evident disapproval, and Sam ducks his head.

 

“I guess I shoulda called her.”

 

“Yes, you should have,” Dean answers, putting a hand on the kid’s shoulder to guide him toward the door.  “I’ll be back in a few,” he offers to Jax, who waves him on.

 

Above the skyline, stars shine sharp and brilliant, free of light pollution and a constant, ironic reminder of what they’ve lost.

 

Dean leans up against the cool metal wall of the clubhouse, and Sam mimics his posture down to crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head back to look up. 

 

As they look, the big sodium security lights buzz to life, obscuring the stars in their immediate view.  Dean blinks and shifts his focus to the gravel.  Sam follows suit.

 

The kid seems content to stand there, saying nothing.

 

At last, though, when Dean hears a big engine moving slowly their way, he surprises himself by saying, “My brother’s name was Sam.”

 

The kid surprises him more by answering, “I know.”

 

Dean shoots him a look that Sam must sense more than see.  His eyes are still fixed on the parking lot.

 

“Don’t ask me,” Sam offers lamely, shrugging up one shoulder defensively.  “Sometimes I just know shit.”

 

“Watch your mouth,” Dean says, automatic, and then sucks in a breath, which he turns into a cough to hide his sudden discomfort.  It’s just the way he used to talk to his Sam, way back when he was growing a smarter mouth with every inch of height.

 

“Okay, Dad,” Sam grouses, and Dean’s breath sticks in his throat.  It’s uncanny the way the kid reminds him of Sam, and Dean shoots a vicious look at the washed out sky, like the guy upstairs pays any attention to his expressions of displeasure.

  
Sure, Dean was bitching just that morning about wanting a sign.  Guess he should’ve been more specific about the form that sign took.

 

First Chuck, now Sam.

 

_What’s next?_

 

He quashes that thought ruthlessly, afraid that if he thinks it it might somehow come true.  Then he snorts and shakes his head at his own folly. 

 

If the big guy gave a rat’s ass about humanity, he sure as hell wouldn’t be reading _Dean’s_ mind. 

 

Alex, Sally’s older brother, pulls up in his beat-up red pickup, leans over the front seat to open the passenger door from the inside.  The handle is missing on the outside.

 

“We were wondering where you’d got to, Sam,” Alex says, skin around his eyes turning his wrinkles to furrows with mild anger.

 

“Sorry, Alex,” Sam answers, ducking his head and hopping agilely into the truck.  As he closes the door, he calls, “See you tomorrow, Dean,” out of the half-open window even as Alex is turning in a wide arc to head back toward the Home.

 

Dean waves and waits until the truck is out of sight before taking in a long breath, running a hand over his face, and turning to go back inside the clubhouse.

 

He finds the crew in church, the council room and heart of the clubhouse.  Chibs and Bobby are arguing about some obscure symbol in Revelation, nothing new there.

 

Sometime while Dean was recovering from resurrection on the Hopi reservation with Sari, Jax had finally taken his rightful seat at the head of the council table, a seat left vacant by the awful death of their last President, Clay, Jax’s step-father.

 

As is tradition, Opie sits at his right hand, which leaves the left-hand seat open for Dean.

 

Technically, Dean isn’t supposed to sit at the council table at all.  Technically, he has no right to offer advice or to vote on decisions made by the club.

 

But technicality went out the window when Dean died, rose from the dead, and returned to take a place not just in the President’s bed but at his side and in his life.

 

The club had finally reconciled its antiquated rules with Dean’s post-apocalypse presence by voting in closed session to make an exception.

  
And that pretty much defined Dean’s role in club life, period.

 

He was an exception to every rule.

Once Dean’s settled in, Jax bangs the gavel for order and they begin, first with his summary of the issues at the weekly forum, starting with the minor troubles of daily life in a closed but growing community.

 

“How’s it goin’ getting the power station back up and running?” Jax asks Juice, who’d turned his technical expertise to more practical matters once computers became an obsolete innovation.

 

“Station’s ready.  It’s just keeping the lines from the plant up and running that’s the problem.”

 

It’s an old story.  The infrastructure of Charming is secure enough, but anything that comes in from the outside, like the power lines from the station on the coast, is plagued with constant sabotage and predation, isolated bands of Scavengers trying to draw them out and pick them off or, lately, more concerted efforts at ambush and capture.  It’s a disturbing trend.

 

Thankfully, they have their own reservoir and purification plant, or they’d be in a lot more serious trouble.

 

“Generator grid?”

 

“Pretty good.  We’ve got enough fuel to run them for a year at current use levels.  We’re talking about contingency plans to ration if we need more time.”

 

“Good.”

 

They run through an agriculture report, talk about heads of cattle and herds of pigs, move on to manufacturing—they’ve got a pretty solid home textile industry up and running—and exhaust the mundane details with a discussion of security details.

 

Dean’s bored out of his mind.  He’s always been more action than talk, and this nitpicking shit makes his eyes glaze over.  He knows it’s important.  He just can’t bring himself to care.

 

Finally, though, Jax moves on to their two most pressing and constant concerns:  contact with other survivors around the country and protection from the growing threat of Scavengers.

 

There’s nothing but anecdotal evidence from stragglers concerning the first point.  A lot of times, those stories seem to be more hope than fact.

 

But on the second point, this is the first Dean’s hearing of Joan’s warning at the gate earlier that day— _god, was it just that morning_ —and he sits up, suddenly a lot more interested in the discussion.

 

When Jax finishes, Opie, with his usual caution to believe new things, asks, “You think it’s legitimate?”

 

Dean answers before Jax can, explaining as succinctly as he can about Chuck and the ex-prophet’s role in the apocalypse itself, and finishing with his connection to the current topic.  “Chuck said about the same thing as Joan.  Said something bad was coming, that Charming wasn’t going to be safe for long.”

 

Opie looks at Dean with open skepticism, but Bobby’s almost eager, “A prophet?  Like Tig?” and Teague’s simultaneously scornful, “Are you shittin’ me?” represent a more balanced spread of opinion on Dean’s information.

 

Teague’s to be forgiven for his disbelief; he wasn’t with the club when the Devil himself came to town.

 

On the flip side, Bobby’s zeal to believe is a product of his having been there to see scripture apparently brought to life.

 

Jax reserves judgment on Chuck, breaking up the arguments flaring around the table about divine intervention with a compromise.  “Juice and Teague are heading out tomorrow anyway.  So they take a detour in the direction that this so-called Army is supposed to be gathering, do some recon.  They get back, we have our answer and take it from there.”

 

“Second,” Piney says impatiently.

 

“All in favor?”

 

The motion carries unanimously.

 

Dean has one amendment to the plan, but he decides to save it for a more personal audience.  Jax is probably going to say no to Dean’s request to go with Juice and Teague, and no’s an answer Dean won’t tolerate. He knows enough about politics not to put the President in an awkward position in front of the whole club.

 

Better they fight it out in private.

 

That thought sends a wave of heat through Dean’s lower belly, a heat he lets build behind his eyes as Jax catches his look and returns it with a subtle up-turn of his upper lip, a flare of his nostrils, slight enough changes, but ones that Dean can read.

 

It has him half-hard in an instant, and he shifts subtly in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

 

Jax asks for other business, waits for a round of head shakes, bangs the gavel to conclude the meeting.  He doesn’t get up with the rest, though, and neither does Dean, reading in Jax’s face some foreknowledge of what Dean is going to ask.

 

When the room is cleared, Jax says without preamble, “I’m not going to like it.”

 

It isn’t a question, so Dean doesn’t answer.

  
“Upstairs?” Jax asks.

  
Dean grimaces internally but offers just a chin-jerk acknowledgment.

 

The roof is Jax’s domain, the place he goes to get away from the rest of the world and think things through.  Dean’s always been welcome there, and more times than not he ends up sharing the view of Charming with the town’s lord and master, the Books of John (as Bobby’s taken to calling their respective fathers’ written legacies), and a potent blend of Jamaican red and Panama long.

 

For his current purposes, though, Dean knows he’s been outplayed.  Not only will he be on what is indisputably Jax’s turf, but he’ll be reminded of Jax’s position by the view and, more to the point, he’ll offer tangible evidence himself of the weakness of his argument as he struggles to climb the fucking ladder.

 

If he protests the location, Jax will know why, and he’ll have no reason at all to go along with Dean’s idea.

 

Jax is a sneaky bastard.  Probably why he makes such a good leader.

 

Sighing, Dean pushes himself up out of his chair, closing his eyes momentarily against the pain and stiffness in his knee.  He’s already given it more than its usual workout today. Still, he forces himself to walk as easily as possible, tries not to show what it costs him.

 

When they get outside to the ladder and he stares up its rungs to the sky, Dean has a moment of wondering if it’s really worth it.  Maybe his pride shouldn’t be driving.  Maybe he should just give in to the inevitable truth, which is that he’s in no shape to go anywhere.

 

 _Fuck that_ , the stubborn voice in his head that’s half John Winchester, half Dean himself from better days.

 

He grabs the bottom rung, pulls himself up, and starts climbing.

 

*****

 

 

 

 

 _There has to be a god.  This much irony requires long-term planning._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 2:19-20)

Jax doesn’t watch Dean labor up the ladder.  That would be putting too fine a point on his reason for meeting up here.

 

Fact is, Jax believes Dean can do whatever he puts his mind to, and it’s Dean’s mind that needs fixing, not his body.

 

Second fact of importance to their imminent “discussion”:  Jax intends to urge Dean to go on the recon mission. 

 

It doesn’t matter that the thought of Dean outside of Charming, where the evil that walks the world in human form can get at him, creates a sour wave of bile that threatens to climb Jax’s throat.

 

What matters is that Dean needs to know he’s not useless.

 

Doesn’t mean Jax isn’t going to make Dean work for what he wants, though.  Dean’s the kind who needs the effort to feel like he deserves what he gets.

 

Jax is already in his usual place, his father’s book open across his knees, when Dean puts one booted foot heavily on the roof and then hauls the other over the roof’s low parapet.

 

“Wendy says hello,” isn’t the way Jax expects Dean to start his appeal.

 

Jax’s face must reflect his confusion because Dean follows with an explanation as he lowers himself carefully into a lawn chair Jax had brought up months ago for that purpose.

 

“Ran into her on the way back from Chuck’s.”

 

“How’s she doin’?”  Jax likes Wendy, both because she’s pretty and sweet and because she’s a tangible reminder of the good he’s done.

 

“Aside from her burning lust for you?”

 

“Shut up,” Jax says, nudging Dean’s foot with his own.  Dean’s snickering.

 

“You could do a lot worse.”

 

“I already have,” Jax answers, leering at Dean. 

 

Dean’s hand goes to his heart in mock agony.  “That hurts, man.”

 

“I’ll make it up to you after you ask me what you want to ask me.” 

 

And like that the light air leaks away, leaving Jax’s heart beating a little harder.  Even though he’s pretty sure of the question and already decided on the answer, if Jax has learned anything about Dean it’s that the man is both ordered by routine and completely unpredictable.

 

“I’m going on the recon mission with Juice and Teague.  I can take turns riding shotgun and manning the sunroof.”

 

They’d fitted the Jeep they use for runs with a hatch sunroof in the backseat and bolted a brace to the floor that someone’d scavenged off a deep-sea fishing boat, so whoever rides back there can stand up, lean back on the brace, and keep watch, the open hatch affording protection and a place to rest the barrel of an assault rifle.

 

“Okay,” Jax says even as Dean’s taking in a breath, gearing up for a long argument.

 

“What?”

 

“I said okay.  Go.  It’ll be good for you, and those two can use a voice of reason.  Not to mention your experience as a hunter.”

 

It’s dark on the roof, but the security kliegs in the yard cast a diffuse light that shows Dean’s narrowed eyes.

 

“Just like that?”

 

“Dean, I’m not your mother.  I can’t stop you if you want to go.  And like I said, you’ve got more experience than most of the guys put together.”

 

“So you think it won’t be a problem?”  
  


Jax closes his father’s book, sets it carefully on the roof, and gives his lover a long look before answering.

 

“It’s not a problem for _me_.”

 

Dean bristles at the emphasis.  “Who—Ope?  Fuck him.”

 

Jax grins humorlessly and shakes his head at the anger in Dean’s voice.

  
“’s not Ope who’s gonna make problems, Dean.”

 

“Who, then?”

 

“You.”

 

“Excuse me?” 

 

“You came up here for a fight, right?  You expected I’d say no because in your head you think I think you can’t hack the job anymore.  But that’s bullshit.  Yeah, so you aren’t a hundred percent.  So what?  Even with your limitations you’re still more of a fighter than most of the crew.  I know it.  They know it.  Hell, why do you think you piss Opie off so much?”

 

“Thought he was jealous of your cock,” Dean inserts, attempting deflection.

  
Jax ignores it, intent on pushing the most painful button as quickly as he can.  “Listen, Dean.  The only thing keeping you from getting back on the horse is you.  I don’t know if it’s fear or damage or what it is, but it’s all you, man.”

 

Dean gets up fast, turns away, probably hiding the way the sudden motion has made him go pale.  He stalks toward the ladder.

 

“That’s it?  You’re just going to run away like a pussy?”

 

Dean’s back, boots scraping as he comes to a stop inches from Jax, who hasn’t gotten up, hasn’t _looked_ up.

 

“Why are you pushing me like this, Jax?  What’s your game?  You tryin’ to piss me off so I take off and you can have your shot at Tara guilt-free?”

 

That gets Jax out of his seat and right into Dean’s space.

 

“What’s it gonna take to get it through your thick fuckin’ skull that I’m not interested in Tara, Dean?  This isn’t about Tara.  Shit, this isn’t even about _me_.  This is all you, man.  You and your fucking self-sacrifice and your damage and your hard-on for suffering.  Why can’t you just wake up and see the world for what it is?  You survived the apocalypse.  You died and came back to life.  You fuckin’ killed the devil.”

 

“ _I killed my brother!_ ”

 

It’s not the volume that tears Jax up, though Dean’s scream had to have been heard by everyone within a mile of the clubhouse.

 

It’s the raw, primal pain in it, an agony that echoes off the buildings below, the stars above.

 

“Dean,” Jax starts, reaching out, but Dean’s already pivoting again, moving toward the ladder, shoulders like a forbidding wall daring Jax to try to reach him.

 

“Dean,” he tries again, afraid of Dean trying to make the climb down in this state.  Afraid maybe he’s misread the situation and Dean isn’t going to use the ladder to get down at all.

 

Dean spins around a third time, the pain of the sudden move telegraphing across his features, washed out to startled freckles in the reflected light of the kliegs.

 

“What gives you the right, Jax?  Huh?  Tell me that!  What gives you the right to talk about him?  About Sam.”  
  
At his brother’s name, Dean’s voice drops in volume, until he’s speaking low, almost gentle, a dangerous deception, Jax knows.

 

“You’ve got your crew and your groupies and your gardens and your fuckin’ generator grid.  What the fuck do you need me for, huh?  What purpose do I serve in your perfect little kingdom?  Fucktoy?  Or maybe you keep me around for historical record:  See the man who saved the world and died trying.”

 

Maybe there was more to the diatribe, but Jax is sick of listening to it, angry enough at Dean’s self-loathing to want to push him off the roof himself.

Instead, he fists Dean’s jacket lapels and lifts, turning at the same time and shoving him hard back and away from the edge of the roof, right into the gooseneck air vent that rises six feet out of the bones of the building.

 

Dean strikes the stainless steel with head, elbows, heels, his impact like a thunderous drum reverberating out over the sleeping town.

 

Dean shakes his head like he’s been stunned, looks up as Jax closes, giving Dean no time to react, shoving his knee up between Dean’s spraddled legs, driving up with enough force to shock the breath from Dean and force him up onto his toes.

 

With his hands, he’s grabbed Dean’s wrists and pinned them at his sides against the cold steel of the gooseneck.

 

He can feel his own breath coming back to him from Dean’s cheek where he has his face turned away from Jax’s words.

 

“I love you, you stupid, stubborn, sorry excuse for a cocksucker.  I love you,” emphasizing the point by squeezing Dean’s wrists until Jax feels the bones grind, until it brings a grunt from the man against him that he feels through his own chest.

  
Until Dean is turning his lips to Jax, biting at his mouth, groaning now, breath hot against his chin, teeth on teeth, desperate and helpless and god but the things he wants to do.

 

He leans in on the pinioning knee and Dean keens—fucking keens—against him, shuddering, and Jax eats the sound from his wet lips, trails it along his stubbled jaw down to the gasping throat, where he bites the apple of Dean’s life, feels it bob under his tongue.

 

There’s a sound below, conspicuous throat-clearing, and then Opie’s voice calls out, clear, “Jax?  You alright?”

 

Jax curses under his breath, leans away from the temptation of Dean’s throat only long enough to shout back, “Yeah, Ope, we’re good.”

 

When he hears the door to the clubhouse close again, he resumes where he left off, if anything more focused for the interruption.

 

Dean is balanced on the single point of Jax’s knee, rocking, desperate for more contact, noises pouring from his mouth, tears from his eyes, and Jax stops, steps back, takes in the wreck of the man he loves, the hard line of Dean’s straining cock under confining denim, the heave of his chest as he gasps for air.

 

“Drop ‘em,” he orders, reaching for his own belt, shucking jeans and boxers and kicking them off over his sneakers, thinking of nothing except his need to be inside Dean, to drive away Dean’s despair with the painful reality that love hurts.

 

At least the way he means to give it.

 

“Jacket, too,” Jax says, and Dean’s hands hesitate, “And shirts,” he adds, implacable, shrugging out of his cut, tearing his tee over his head.

 

When the shirt clears his head, he sees that Dean still has his tee-shirt on.

 

With an impatient sound, he closes the distance between them, steps on Dean’s jeans, still wrapped around his ankles, too narrow-legged to get over his boots without untying them. 

 

He grabs the bottom hem of the offending shirt, tugs roughly upward until Dean raises his arms and Jax can pull the tee off.  He tosses it behind them carelessly, realizes it’s gone over the edge only when Dean makes a sound of protest.

 

When Jax steps back once more, Dean staggers a little, eyes dazed, barely tracking Jax’s movement.

He sees the moment Dean focuses, takes in the direction of Jax’s own gaze, fixed on tracing the pooled silver flesh furrowing his chest all the way down to his navel, where a single wormy scar works its way into Dean’s bellybutton.

 

Beneath it, the hair arrows down to Dean’s cock, already hard, straining upward in an inverse shallow parabola.

 

Jax lets his eyes travel down the strong thighs, bowed legs, lingers on the deep indentation over Dean’s left knee, which hasn’t been right since an uber-werewolf savaged it in Cincinnati.

 

Back up, taking his time, admiring the lines of his lover’s muscles, the subtle jump of the flesh on his lower belly, a quiver of anticipation, and the way his breath makes his diaphragm heave, the spread of his collarbones, the angelic handprint, faded gray like it’s been there forever and that forever marks Dean as different from other men.

 

Finally to the beloved face Jax sees in dreams, screaming or smiling, the eyes that look back with a momentary surprise that they’ve been caught wanting.

 

Because that’s what Jax sees in Dean’s face: Want.  Dean’s desire not just for sex, not for hard riding and sweating thighs and groans of rutting but for release from what he carries always, in the marks on his body, in the invisible losses etched inside of him.

 

“Turn around,” Jax grates, but Dean resists, shaking his head, hands clenched.

 

“I’m not your bitch.”

 

“No,” Jax answers, running his hands up Dean’s sides, delineating his ribs one by one, fingers probing but gentle, numbering the cage around Dean’s heart.  “You’re not.”  Stroking downward now, down the vee that cuts to his jutting shaft, wrapping one hand around the root of Dean’s pleasure, tucking the other between Dean’s legs to stroke his balls and slide one long finger back between his cheeks to circle the secret, puckered muscle.

 

He feels Dean’s thighs shaking against his wrist and relents, pulling that hand away but keeping the other on his cock.

 

“But I want to fuck you ‘til you feel my cock in the back of your throat, and I can’t do that from the front.”

 

It isn’t precisely surrender, but the sound Dean makes is a kind of abandonment, his eyes widening as Jax’s words sink in and take hold.  He feels Dean’s cock jump in his hand, strokes once to bring a breathy moan from him, and then lets go.

 

Dean turns, shoulder brushing Jax’s chest as he does so, Jax not giving an inch, sliding his cock into the tight slot of Dean’s ass, bumping that sensitive flesh behind the balls, wrapping a hand around Dean’s waist to hold his cock tight at the base.

 

Dean’s “Fuck,” is grating, harsh, his breath coming in gasping bursts, and Jax shuts him up by abruptly thrusting three fingers into his mouth.

 

“Suck me,” he growls, biting into the meat of Dean’s shoulder to keep from coming at the wet obscenity of Dean’s tongue rooting between his fingers.

 

He pulls his hand away roughly, guides a single wet finger along the crack of Dean’s ass, finds the hole, pushes in.  Dean’s cursing ratchets up, comes out in hissing syllables, but Jax persists, ungentle, voice whispering, “I love you,” and “So fucking tight,” and “Don’t you fucking come yet,” until he’s got three fingers seated and Dean’s been reduced to nonsense and noises like an animal in rut.

 

At last, he pulls his fingers from inside Dean, Dean bucking at the loss, and then spits in his hand and strokes himself once, twice—not enough, too much, he can’t think, he wants to be buried in Dean until he can feel Dean’s heartbeat against his cock.

 

“This is gonna hurt,” he warns, but he doesn’t sound sorry, only strained with pushing in, Dean still too tight, too dry for it, his hitched breaths turning to hiccups turning to “Jesus Christ, motherfucker, son of a bitch” as Jax shoves in, relentless despite the resistance, despite everything, intent on driving home his point with every painful, loving stutter of his hips.

 

When he’s seated at last, he stops for a second, cheek against Dean’s sweat-slicked back.  Dean is trembling beneath him, but when Jax twitches his hips just a fraction of an inch, the motion changes to a shudder, and Dean throws his head back hard enough to bruise Jax’s collarbone, strangled cry leaving him, mouth agape in a scream he struggles to swallow.

  
And Jax does it again.

 

Again, rocking now, driving Dean up with every flex of his hips, muscles of his thighs screaming in protest, Dean himself struggling to keep from being thrown against the cold metal, to keep his cock from scraping the vent.

 

What coordination Jax has left is just enough to reach around and help Dean out, rough upward strokes in time with his riving thrusts.  Once, twice, a third time and Dean is breath-stopped, eyes-tight-shut, neck and back arching like he’s been electrocuted, every muscle in his body tensing around the sensation.

 

He chokes out a moan, maybe Jax’s name, takes in at last an attenuated, shuddering breath, and shouts, body spasming around Jax where he’s buried as deeply as he can go, and Jax feels like he’s going to die of the sweltering, impossible throttle of Dean’s body around his cock just before white light strobes behind his eyes and a sunburst explodes outward from his core.

 

He’s half-convinced that when he opens his eyes, he’ll see the shadows of their bodies lined in ash against the vent pipe, like reminders of their personal holocaust.

Instead, the first thing he sees are Dean’s hands, clenched against the metal, Dean’s head bowed, shoulders heaving like he’s just run an immense distance to come to this place and this time.

 

Jax leans in, covering Dean’s back, pulling him back against his body with the hand still wrapped around his waist.

 

“Are we clear?” He says, voice wrecked from pleasure but still definite and demanding an answer.

 

A full body shudder makes Jax shiver, too, softening but still inside Dean. 

 

“Yeah,” Dean whispers at last.  Then, almost inaudible, even to Jax, who is as close as he can be to Dean in that moment:  “I love you, too.”

 

There’s only so much of this heavy-duty emotional shit either of them can take, so Jax changes the tone of the night by pulling out quickly, which earns a grunt of shocked protest from Dean.  After climbing into his pants, Jax looks around for his shirt, retrieves it, and smoothes it down over Dean’s sweaty back, taking advantage of Dean’s shaky attempts to pull his pants up to wipe down the crevice of his ass and remove what he can of the evidence of their passion he finds there.

 

In the pale reflected light on the roof, the blood looks blue.  He squelches the urge to apologize and instead simply offers Dean a lit spliff.

 

His lover takes it with a grateful sound, one hand still doing up the buttons of his overshirt.  Jax watches Dean take careful steps over to his chair, hides a wince of sympathy at the expression on Dean’s face when his ass makes contact with the seat.

 

Bundling up the used tee-shirt and tossing it behind the vent, shrugging bare-chested into his cut, Jax sidles over to join Dean, sitting down and taking the joint, enjoying the sweet smoke for a few minutes of silence.

 

Surprisingly, it’s Dean who breaks it.

  
“Guess you wanted me limping for a different reason.”

 

There’s a cautious humor in Dean’s tone and a certain understanding.

 

Jax lets smoke out with a chuff of laughter.  “Yeah, that was the idea.”

 

“Wanted to be sure I wouldn’t fuck Teague on the mission, too, I bet.”

 

His laugh is louder on the second exhale.  “That’s it exactly.  I see the way you two look at each other.”

 

Teague doesn’t like Dean, and the feeling is mutual.  It isn’t the same as Opie’s invested distrust of what Dean means to the club.  No, this is good old-fashioned junkyard dog territoriality.  Teague thinks Dean’s a New Age whackjob and Dean thinks Teague’s a redneck dumbfuck.

 

“We cool?” Jax asks, hoping the attempted humor of the last few minutes will carry the question as he means it without dropping them right back into a devastating stew of emotions too hard to live with or even talk through for very long.

 

Dean’s hand lands on his knee, a light slap, “What’s daddy Teller got to say about tomorrow’s recon?”

 

That’s all the answer Jax is going to get, but it’s enough.  He picks up his father’s manifesto and opens it to a random page.

 

Jax isn’t superstitious by nature, has a head only for the most practical aspects of leadership, but since God gave him his sixth sense about people—call it empathy or intuition or whatever—he’s been a little more open to the possibilities of an invisible world beyond his immediate understanding.

 

It helps that his lover has the indelible handprint of an angel seared into his skin.

 

And that said lover was resurrected three days after dying at the end of the end of the world.

 

So what started out a stupid game, seeking half-serious help in his father’s words, has become a kind of divination.  A lot of what the Johns—Teller and Winchester—had included in their respective works has come to pass in strange and unsettling ways.

 

The two men couldn’t have known that they were prophesying the apocalypse, but it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that their words hold weight now, when unexpected events have unfolded that were nevertheless predicted by them.

 

By the flickering light of Dean’s ubiquitous disposable Bic, harder to get in these times but no less necessary, Jax reads:

 

_I’ve come by close observation of the human condition to a grim understanding that disaster is necessary for the survival of the species.  Only after the worst has happened, after we’ve had all of our so-called civilization stripped away from us, do we see ourselves as we are:  naked, raw, essential.  And only in that desperate condition can we rebuild the world in a new vision.  Not peace like the hippies talk about.  It is not in man’s nature to avoid conflict.  But a system by which the means to create justice are in the hands of every individual, dependent only on the individual’s ability to deliver judgment impartially and totally._

“Sounds like survival of the fittest,” Dean says.  “Guess he was right about that.”

 

“Yeah, except the weak haven’t been given the ‘means to create justice.’”  Jax observes bitterly, weariness making his voice rough.

 

“But they will,” Dean answers, a firmness and resolve in his tone that has been lacking for a long time.

  
Jax looks up.  Half of Dean’s face is cast in shadows, but in the remaining light his profile is clear, and Jax sees his lover’s eyes fixed upward on the stars strewn like the wild wreckage of some great explosion across the night sky.

 

“You sound sure,” he offers, unsure himself how to proceed.  Dean has surprised him again.

 

Dean nods.  “You’re a lot of things, Jax, but a quitter isn’t one of them.  Your dad left you that book to remake the world.  He might not’ve known how bad the disaster would be, but he knew he could trust you to rebuild.”

 

Jax snorts.  It’s like they’ve switched positions.  “Hell of a thing to ask of a kid.”

 

Dean’s feeling, “Yeah,” speaks of his own burden of paternity.  “But you can handle it.”

 

Jax shrugs.  “Maybe.”

 

“Nope.”  Dean’s firm, even around the slow exhale of a sweet stream of smoke.  “Definitely.”

 

“And what about what your father left you?”

 

Dean hands Jax the spliff but doesn’t look at him, only leans a little over in his chair, the shadows eating up his expression. 

 

“I’ve already done my duty.”

 

Jax hears the same old despair there, not driven out even by his efforts to prove Dean’s value beyond what the world may have asked of him.

 

“Look it up,” he says, referring to John Winchester’s journal. 

 

Dean defers.  “It’s in the car.”

 

But Jax won’t be put off.  He reaches under his seat to the other binder he keeps there, hands it to Dean.

 

At last, Dean looks at him full-on in the indifferent light.  It’s not an entirely friendly expression.

 

“You copied his journal?”

 

“You were dead, remember?  And it’s important.”

 

Dean gives a derisive snort, discounting what he knows to actually be true of his father’s words, but takes the binder, opening it at random and reading in a bored voice that grows less so as he does:

 

_The world I want for my boys isn’t this one.  This one is full of evil that can’t be eradicated.  I stamp it out in one place only for it to pop up in another, twice as bad and three times as hard to kill.  It’s going to take a miracle or a terrible disaster to change what this world is into what it can become.  But whichever it is, miracle or disaster (and I’m pretty sure I know which it’ll be), my boys are ready.  They’re the ones who’ll have to put it all back together after me and the others have gotten done fucking it up and taking it apart.  But they can do it.  I have faith in next to nothing, not mankind, certainly not god.  But I have faith in them, in my sons.  After the worst is over, then it’s their time.  I have to believe that.  Otherwise, what am I fighting for now?_

“Fuck,” Dean says, heartfelt.  At the end, his voice had dropped almost to a whisper, like awe had overtaken him.  “Fuck,” he repeats, a little stronger.

 

“Guess I’m stuck with you,” Jax observes, keeping it light.  But he rests his hand for a long moment on Dean’s good knee.

 

“So let’s assume there’s a Scavenger army headin’ our way.  What next?”

 

This time it’s not patented Winchester deflection.  Dean’s in his element, shrewd light in his eyes, motor revving.

Jax removes his hand and flips to the back of his father’s book, where he’s put blank pages for his own ramblings.  He pulls a pen from where it’s clipped to the binder spring.

 

“You tell me,” he throws back, a challenge Dean’s willing to answer.

 

It’s the deep stillness of the witching hour when they finally knock off.  Jax’s eyes are bleary with trying to see the page in the dim light.  Dean’s stifling a series of yawns behind a cupped hand.

 

When they’re back on the ground, Jax gestures Dean ahead of him.  He notices that Dean’s walking gingerly, and he can’t help the slow burn of pride in his belly that he put that hitch in Dean’s step.

 

Without turning or slowing, Dean says, “Laugh it up, fuzzball.  Payback’s a bitch.”

 

“That’s from two different movies,” Jax observes idly, too tired for anything sharper.

 

Dean turns in the doorway, handle already turning under his palm, and Jax is forced to stop then.  He looks up in surprise to find Dean smirking.

 

Leaning in close, Dean whispers, “I’m going to fuck you until your voice is gone from screaming my name, and then I’m going to come down your throat to ease the burn.”

 

Dazed and turned on despite his exhaustion, still fighting off the shiver Dean’s hot breath in his ear brings up in him, Jax manages, “What’s that from?”

 

“It’s not a line.  It’s a promise.”

 

Jax loses his battle with the shiver as he listens to Dean’s dark laugh trail behind him up the hallway.

 

“Fuck,” he says to himself.  But he’s smiling.

 

*****

 

 

 

 

 

 _There are all kinds of people in the world, not just good and bad, smart and dumb, but all degrees in between and every combination.  The trick isn’t to get along with everyone.  The trick is to figure out the ones who are your kind of people and keep them around.  The rest of them are on their own._ (The Book of Sons and Brothers 9:17-20)

Dean won the flip for first on shotgun, which is why Jax is at the passenger window of the Jeep, leaning on one forearm, talking to them all.

 

“Juice does the recon,” he says, tone suggesting there’s no room for argument.  Dean knows why it can’t be him, and he’s okay with it until Teague snickers from the back seat.  He tightens his jaw and takes in a breath to speak, and Jax’s fingers brush his shoulder.

 

The snicker comes again, louder.

 

Jax peers between the doorframe and the front seat to level a look at Teague that shuts the man up.  “Sorry,” he mutters.

 

“We gonna have a problem here?”  It’s couched as a question, but the answer’s inherent.

  
“No, sir.” 

 

“Good,” Jax says, “Teague, you know Oregon better than Juice and Dean.  Your job is to navigate, figure out escape routes, plan out the recon with Dean once you’re on the ground and have a better sense of things.  You drive getaway if you need to bug out in a hurry and Juice can’t.  Dean’s back-up.”

 

Jax is repeating what they’d already discussed over a hurried breakfast at the crack of dawn, and Dean can tell he’s stalling, maybe not quite ready to let him go.

 

“We got it,” Dean says, meeting Jax’s eyes and holding them, letting the memory of last night light them up.  Jax grins and slaps the door panel.

 

“Get outta here, then.  What the hell you waitin’ for?  See you in a couple, three days.”

 

“Hey,” Dean says as they start to pull away.  Juice brakes, letting Jax jog up.

 

“Could you swing by Chuck’s?  I promised to show him around town today.  And maybe have Bobby pick Sam up at the Home, take him for ice cream.  Tell them I’m sorry and I’ll catch up with them when I’m back.”

 

“Anything else?” Jax says wryly, but he’s smiling wide open in a way that makes Dean smile back.

 

Teague makes a gagging noise from the back, and Jax slaps the side panel again.

 

In the side view, Dean watches Jax get smaller, and then his attention is drawn to the junker bunker and their slow roll through the maze, out the gate, through the minefield and then on to the road north toward Eugene and the purported massing of an army of totally human but no less evil sons of bitches.

 

As if he’s read Dean’s mind, Juice says, “Scavengers,” and spits out the window like the word tastes bad. 

 

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be another one of those straggler legends,” Dean offers, not really believing it. 

 

“Like how you’re a hero?” Teague inserts, leaning forward between the two seats.

 

Dean doesn’t give him the satisfaction of turning his head, but he does nod, a short, jerking movement.  “Yeah, like that.” 

 

Dean’s response, devoid of any hint of sarcasm, seems to confuse the Portland Son and he sits back.

 

“You two gonna bark at each other all day?” Juice asks, eyes on the road, hands tight on the wheel.

 

“Not me,” Dean says with fake heartiness.  “I’m gonna blast the tunes and think happy thoughts.”  He leans forward and flicks the ancient cassette player on, pushes in the battered Metallica tape that he’d brought from the box in the back seat of the Impala.

 

As the first strains of _Call of Cthulu_ creep eerily through the tinny speakers, Teague makes a noise of disgust and says, “Are we gonna listen to this shit all the way to Eugene?”

 

Again, Dean ignores Teague, turning instead to Juice.  “You’re the driver.  It’s your call.” 

 

Juice catches Teague’s eye in the rearview. “Sorry, man.  I like Metallica.”

 

“Fuckin’ pansy-ass headbanger shit,” Teague says, loud enough to be heard over the screaming melody line.

 

Dean smirks, cradles the scattergun closer to his chest, and looks ahead, content to let the Jeep eat up the miles accompanied by Lars and the boys and free of conversation altogether.

 

In the old days, Eugene, Oregon, was an eight hour drive straight up the I-5 from Charming.  Nowadays, it could take them two days to get there, depending on what they meet in between.

  
They’re off the I-5 in minutes, skirting Stockton, which is infested with the undead, and taking back roads in a roughly northeasterly direction, heading for the long swaths of green on the map, knowing that forests and mountains mean scarcer populations and less likelihood of interference from anyone, living or undead.

 

In another of the many ironies of the post-apocalypse, the weather is holding steady at gorgeous, as it has for the entire summer and right on into September. 

 

 _No wonder people are flocking to California_ , Dean thinks, breathing out a laugh.  Juice cuts him a look and Dean waves it off, nothing to see here.

 

They stop after a solid three hours so Juice can take a piss, Dean stretch his legs.  Teague grunts his way out of the back seat, bitching about the cramped quarters.

 

“Stand up, then,” Juice says over his shoulder from where he’s pissing on a road sign, referring to the hatch and brace set up for that purpose.

 

“And get bugs in my teeth?  No thanks.”

Dean had resigned himself to Teague’s shit, so instead of telling the guy to stop being a whiny-ass bitch, he walks up the shoulder ten yards, walks back, working the stiffness out of his left knee and for once happy to have his injury as an excuse to hide the other reason he’s walking so carefully.  As he walks, he stretches his pecs to get the blood moving under the mass of scars on his chest.

 

“Back-up,” Dean hears Teague sneer in his direction as Dean makes it back to the Jeep, pace picking up the last few feet.  Dean tells himself Teague’s an asshole, to let it go.  He makes another lap.  Another.

 

Juice, meanwhile, has gotten some water from his backpack and is guzzling it down, long throat working, tattooed skull shining in the brilliant sunlight.

 

Juice is a good-looking kid, and Dean enjoys the view.  Because Teague is watching, he enjoys it maybe more than is strictly necessary, watching a glittering rivulet work its way down Juice’s throat, spreading into a damp spot on his collar just above the join of his collarbones.

 

Teague makes a disgusted sound.  “You gonna let this fag eye-fuck you all day or are we gettin’ on the road?”

 

Part of Juice’s not inconsiderable charm is that he doesn’t know he’s attractive.  That’s in evidence now as he widens his eyes in confusion at Teague and then transfers the look to Dean, who’s smoothed his features into indifferent innocence.

 

Dean shrugs as if to say, _I don’t know, man_ , and waits for Teague to climb in before resuming his seat.

 

Another two hours and they’re out again, pissing, eating a quick sandwich, switching duties, Dean in the back now, hatch open, legs braced, ass on the fishing seat, AK in its cradle on the hatch’s upper rim.

 

They haven’t seen a soul yet, the few-and-far-between houses seemingly abandoned, the occasional multi-car wreck picked clean, even the bones of the dead gone, probably dragged off by animals a long time back.

 

Whenever they near one of the myriad tiny towns indicated on the map, they turn off the music, grow alert and extra-cautious. 

 

Nothing.

  
They blow through town after town, kicking up nothing more than gravel and road dust.

 

“We should check these places out for supplies on the way back,” Dean says, leaning inside to relay the message to Juice.  Juice acknowledges with a wave and a nod.  The music’s too loud for conversation.

 

The first time he feels a jolt against his right knee, he assumes it’s an accident.

  
The second time, he takes a deep breath and lets it out, focuses on the bend in the road ahead.

 

But when Teague grinds his elbow into Dean’s right thigh, just above the knee, Dean ducks through the hatch and says, low and directly into Teague’s grinning face, “I’d hate to lose my balance and plug one through the roof into your head.”

 

The grin slips when Teague takes in Dean’s eyes.  He’s dead serious.

After that, Teague keeps himself to himself.

 

They’re forty miles from Eugene when they start to see signs of recent activity.  A tire wrenched off a jackknifed tractor trailer doing the duty of fire-pit.  A two-story classic western hotel and saloon, every window shattered, bullet-riddled double gallery ample evidence that the place had been used for target practice.

 

A school bus that had been ineffectual cover for the four dead guys hanging out the windows and roof hatch, bloating and skin-black, sightless eye sockets a mute testament to the predation of crows, whose caws are loud in the trees around them as they idle and stare at the scene.

 

“Scavengers,” Juice says again, again spitting.

 

“Looks like we’d better get off this road,” Dean says.

 

“Nah, we got at least another twenty miles before we’re in the outskirts of Eugene.  Nothin’ much between here and there but more a these small towns,” Teague throws out, sharp and disdainful.

 

“Which would be my point,” Dean observes, holding his temper with an iron will, jaw aching from the effort of clenching his teeth.  “Obviously, these towns are being used as outposts.  Might have eyes on us right now.”

 

Juice shifts uneasily behind the wheel, but Teague just laughs, a braying, scornful sound that makes Dean want to knock his teeth down his throat until he chokes on his own blood.

 

Instead, he leans forward between the seats and ignores the ugly son of a bitch, referring instead to a map of Oregon spread out on the dash.

 

“Juice, turn right up ahead, onto that one-lane.  That should take us well east of the bigger towns, keep us out of harm’s way.  You think they’re stayin’ in the city itself?”

 

Teague cranes his neck around to give Dean a contemptuous look.  “No, I’m sure they’re obeying the vagrancy laws and sticking to the outskirts.”

 

Again, Dean has to resist the urge to punch the guy.  “Or maybe they’re gathering in a big, open space, setting it up like a tent city.  Someplace like this.”  Dean points to a big green space marked “Buford Recreation Area.”

 

“Looks like a couple of county parks adjoin it,” Juice says.

 

Dean nods, considering the map.  “There’s fresh water, plenty of space.  Might even be shelters or something.”

 

Teague makes a sound like he’s sucking his teeth but says nothing.

 

“You got something to add?  You’re supposed to be the expert on this region.”

 

Dean throws it like a gauntlet, and Teague turns half around in his seat like he’s going to climb into the back.

 

“You’re full of shit.  They’re going to stay in the city itself.  If they need open spaces, they’ll use the city parks, playgrounds, parking ramps.  There’s fresh water in Eugene—two rivers.”  He cites the places he’s describing as he speaks on the inset of the City of Eugene to the left of the central, larger map.

 

Both men look at Juice, who rolls his eyes and starts driving again, following Dean’s directions.

 

“I’ll head east, find a place to hole up.  The park’s closer, so I’ll check that first.  If nothing turns up, I’ll head into the city.”

 

Dean grunts an affirmative as he eases back in his seat, retrieves the AK from the floor, and then stands back up to watch from up top again.

 

The southwest approach to the park is pretty clear, only the unfulfilled promise of half-built developments to give them pause.  They see nothing moving down the weed-choked streets, nothing through the waist-high grass that must once have been well-tended lawns.

 

They keep going until they’re within a couple of miles of the park, when Juice pulls into an unnamed side road ending in a hard-packed clay field, big earth movers squatting idle like fossils of a forgotten race.

 

He wrestles the Jeep onto the clay, parks it behind a Caterpillar’s enormous tracks.

 

“I don’t think we should risk recon tonight.  It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and I don’t know the territory.  We can camp here for the night, and I’ll go in at first light.”

 

“I’m tellin’ you it’s a waste of time.  We should push on for Fairmont tonight, park our asses there.”

 

But Juice says, “No,” and Teague subsides in a huff, muttering, “Least we coulda squatted at one of those McMansions back there.”

 

“We wouldn’t know if someone or something was coming,” Dean notes mildly, expertly breaking down the AK, blowing out the road dust, putting it back together, eyes not on the weapon but on Teague, who’s twitching with every metallic sound Dean makes from the back seat.

 

Dean smirks to himself and whistles, which is enough to push Teague from the Jeep in an explosive motion, swearing trailing behind him as he heads off around a front-end loader and disappears from sight.

 

“Maybe he’ll fall into a sinkhole,” Dean suggests, like he’s talking about what pleasant weather they’ve been having.

 

“He’s not so bad,” Juice tries.

  
Dean leans forward enough to catch the kid’s eye.

 

“Okay, he’s a douchebag.  But he’s good with a gun, and we need the back-up.”

 

Dean offers only a one-shouldered shrug in response, finishes the gun maintenance, reaches around to the far back for his duffle and climbs out just as the kid’s boots hit the dirt, too.

 

“Where you figure to camp?” Dean asks, squinting against the dying light.

 

“I was gonna sleep up in the cab,” Juice says, staring up with a little kid’s eager glee at the Caterpillar towering over them.  “How about you?”

 

“I’ll take a turn,” Dean says, nodding.  He hates sleeping on the ground if he can help it—snakes, not to mention the inevitable stiffness in his bones.  Plus, the cab will give him the advantage of good sightlines.   

 

“You and Teague gonna kill each other tomorrow while I’m off scouting?”

 

Dean gives a humorless breath of a laugh.  “Hey, man, you were here for the ride.  It’s not me stirring the shit pot.”

 

Juice ducks his head, pinches his lower lip, then raises his eyes to squint at the sun low off the western horizon.  “Yeah.  But you still gotta deal with him tomorrow.”

 

Dean wonders if Juice is being deliberately ambiguous.  That phrase, “deal with him,” the way Juice inflects it…

 

“What happens in Eugene stays in Eugene, huh?”  He clarifies.

 

Juice smiles, a wicked, beautiful smile.  “You could say that.”

 

“Good enough,” Dean says, feeling his heart race at the idea of violence.  He can’t kill Teague—Juice is right, damn it, they do need the guy.  But maybe he can put him in his place, which is well down the pecking order from Dean himself.

 

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.  The same reason Teague hates Dean—his perceived “privilege” as Jax’s whatever-he-is—is the very reason Dean can’t take Teague apart at the clubhouse.  People see Dean as an extension of Jax’s authority.  If he wants to beat the shit out of Teague, he either needs a good, club-sanctioned reason…or privacy and distance.

 

Dean’s still got a shit-eating grin on his face when Teague stomps back to the Jeep.

  
“You got a little jizz right there,” he notes, wiggling a finger in the direction of Dean’s mouth.  Juice ignores him, and Dean for his part just smiles wider.  Fuel for the fire, baby.

 

They eat a quick, cold meal of beer and sandwiches from the cooler, talk exit strategies and what-ifs, Teague managing to do both his actual mission-related job and the job of asshole without any apparent internal conflict.

 

Teague, who’s got third watch, makes it clear he’s not sleeping anywhere near Dean, which is fine with Dean, and at full dark the big guy disappears back in the direction he’d gone off to earlier. 

 

Juice says, “Three hours,” at the guy’s retreating back, and Teague flips him the bird in acknowledgement.

 

“Are there mountain lions around here?” Dean wonders, not at all idly.

  
Juice snorts and climbs up to the Cat’s cab.

 

The night is quiet, broken only by insects and critters and, somewhere far off, water running over rocks. 

For the first year after the apocalypse really let loose, Dean didn’t sleep more than two hours at a time, and it wasn’t always because he didn’t have a safe place to rest his head.

 

There were nights in the desert, miles from anything like a hoard of infected undead.

  
Nights in churches that served as sanctuary.

 

Nights in the mountains of Colorado, protected by a coven.

 

But even on those nights when he was least likely to die for the simple sin of falling asleep, Dean couldn’t do it.

 

It was too fuckin’ quiet.

 

Air travel was over, the last of the military jets decommissioned when they proved ineffective against dragons and winged demons of the infernal variety.

 

What vehicles there were on the road didn’t travel at night for the same reason that Dean himself didn’t.  Evil got stronger in the dark.  Plus, it could sneak up on you easier.

 

There were only the night sounds he’d usually overlooked or ignored before:  crickets, coyotes, owls, even the sonic squealing of bats.

 

Raised with the hum of the road for white noise, Dean couldn’t find rest when he couldn’t hear it.

 

Now, though, he finds the night noises soothing, a happy reminder that there are things that will always persevere.  It’s comforting to think that crickets and field mice might outlast humanity.

 

Something has to, if only to make it clear that creation wasn’t entirely a mistake.

 

He derails that train of thought, not interested in riding it tonight, and instead considers the ways in which he’s going to hurt Teague tomorrow.

 

It’s not like Dean doesn’t have his misgivings.  Teague’s an inch or two shorter, but he’s got seventy-five pounds on Dean.  Of course, most of that is beer and over-confidence, which is what Dean’s counting on.  If Teague’s smart enough to use Dean’s weaknesses against him, Dean might very well end up on the losing end of this object lesson.

 

That’s not going to stop him, though.

 

He doesn’t waste much time worrying about what Juice might discover on the next day’s recon.  There’s no point in worrying when the rumors might prove to be nothing or, if they don’t, there’s fuck-all he can do to change the situation. 

 

Time’s better spent thinking about Jax’s mouth around his cock, except there are disadvantages to that plan, most notably the wood he’s sporting when Juice finally climbs down from the Cat, yawn splitting his face, and says, “All yours.”

 

Dean climbs up into the cab of the Cat and tries to settle in.  The seat’s not really long enough for him to stretch out full, and keeping his bad knee bent at any angle is a bad idea if he wants to be mobile in the morning. 

 

No posture is really comfortable when he’s got a hard-on throbbing against his zipper, either.

 

Only one way to fix that.

  
He feels a little bit like he’s fourteen again, sneaking into the back of the Impala while Dad’s inside someplace getting guns or information, Sam’s off doing something geeky like browsing for used paperbacks. 

 

He unzips, hoping it’s only his imagination that the sound is really loud, remembering that sensation, too, from his past.  Furtively, he slips his hand into the space left by the open fly and strokes himself, holding back a steady hum as the sensation ripples to his toes, curling them in his boots.  He speeds up, closes his eyes, imagines Jax bent over the hood of the Impala, pressed against her shining metal, hands behind him spreading his cheeks, begging in a strangled voice for Dean to fuck him.

 

Heat blooms in his belly, spreads like ground lightning, making him kick for purchase to thrust up into his hand.

 

Jax is moaning now, Dean shoving in hard, pulling out, thrusting again, Jax babbling his name, begging, lips wet and wide, eyes tight shut against the invasion.

 

Dean twists his hand around the head of his cock as in his mind he drives Jax up onto his toes, and as Jax shouts and spatters the Impala’s hood with come, Dean comes in his hand, juddering out the last drops as he loses rhythm and gasps for breath.

 

With his free hand, he feels around the cab floor, happy to find that the construction crew four years ago liked McDonalds at least enough to stock up on napkins.  They’re a little dusty from long disuse, but they’ll do to wipe spooge off his hand.

 

Tucked away and a little less wired, Dean shifts until he finds a more or less comfortable position and tries to sleep.  He’s just about convinced that it’s not going to work when a banging on the Cat door startles him upright, gun out, safety off.

 

“Up and at ‘em,” Juice says, and Dean notices for the first time the pearly grey light of dawn making the windshield opaque.  He must’ve gotten some sleep after all.

 

He grunts, shakes off the woolies, climbs down on legs sorely in need of stretching.  He multitasks by going a half-mile away to dig a cat-hole and take care of the morning’s business.

 

By the time he’s back, Juice is wolfing down another sandwich, pack already slung over one shoulder, map in his back pocket, dark hat tucked down over his forehead.

 

“You boys be good while I’m gone,” Juice drawls, giving Dean a wink.  “Daddy’ll bring you back a present.”

 

“Fuckin’ fags,” Teague says under his breath.  Juice just laughs.  He’d have had to bail out of the club long ago if it bothered him to be the object of speculation regarding his orientation.  He’s too fuckin’ pretty by half.

 

Dean watches Juice jog away at an easy, ground-eating lope, waits until he’s well out of eyeshot and not likely to turn back for something, and then he pivots on one heel and drops his smile.

 

“I think it’s time you and me got better acquainted,” he suggests, hands loose at his side, heels planted.  Even with the bum knee, he’s learned balance, learned how to take the weight from it when he needs to, how to compensate for its weakness.

 

“I don’t fuck fags,” Teague says, like it’s the first time and Dean might not have been aware.

 

“I don’t want to fuck you, moron.  I want to fuck you up.”

 

Teague’s expression changes, then, but not enough.  He doesn’t think Dean’s a threat, which is clear on his approach.  He walks up close enough that Dean can smell his morning breath and the stench of unwashed denim, which gives Dean the perfect opportunity to lay him out.

  
He doesn’t.

 

Instead, he waits, shoulders deceptively loose, posture open, like he’s inviting a charge.

 

But Teague’s got more ugly to spew before he takes a chance on hitting Dean, so Dean makes it easy.

  
“So we’re clear:  Jax isn’t here and we aren’t in Charming anymore.  There’s just you and me.  And you need a lesson in manners.”

 

“Like how to take a dick up my ass and say ‘thank you’?”

 

“Like how to shut the fuck up when your betters are talking,” Dean clarifies.

 

“You think you’re better’n me, gimp?  You can’t even walk straight.”

 

“This ain’t about walking,” Dean answers, letting his weight settle on his good leg.

 

Teague grunts out a laugh and swings, big fist heading for Dean’s jaw.  Dean ducks it easily, dodges, careful how he shifts his weight, taking from months of training what he’s learned about playing to his strengths. 

 

Teague is still resetting his stance when Dean lands a body blow, and as Teague’s recovering, off-balance and winded, Dean follows through with a left hook.

 

Teague manages to get out of the way of some of it, but he catches a grazing blow to the chin, and Dean hears the satisfying sound of his teeth slamming together.

 

Shaking his head, eyes refocusing, Teague brings his hands up in a classic fighter’s pose. 

 

No more fucking around, then.

 

The second swing is faster, and Dean has time only to bring his shoulder up, tuck his ear in, and take it on the hard skull above the ear.  The blow rings through his head like someone’s pounding on his brain with a mallet.

 

Teague swears, knuckles splitting, and Dean blinks pain-tears out of his eyes, shuffling like it hurt him worse than it did, trying to lure Teague in for another charge.

 

Cautious now, though, Teague feints, which Dean ignores, pretending like he’s too dazed to follow.  When Teague cuts toward him for another blow, Dean shifts his weight, throws a crow-kick that nails the big guy in the thigh just above the knee.

 

He staggers, catches himself, hops a few steps, stops, swaying, swearing viciously, rabid eyes fixed with complete hatred on Dean, who’s smiling, curling the fingers of one hand up in a taunting invitation.

 

He can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears from Teague’s blow, can feel a goose-egg coming up, feel the treacherous tendons in his knees creaking in protest, doesn’t give a shit about any of it.  Dean was born for this, and he’s going to get what he can out of the moment.

 

It’s probably his ridiculous smile that causes the next thing.

 

Teague telegraphs his motion, dropping his shoulder like a linebacker going up and under before charging, and Dean knows he’s going down, not fast enough to get out of the way.

 

Instead, Dean focuses on how he’s going to land, making sure to roll right, not to land on his bad knee or twist it when they strike the ground.

 

If he cripples himself, Teague will beat him to death.

 

Dean sidesteps the brunt of Teague’s charge, lets the man’s own weight carry them over, Dean using the momentum of the motion to turn them so he’s on top, knees tight up under the guy’s armpits, sliding into place like he was born to be there. 

 

The thought has Dean grinning a wicked, lascivious grin, and though Teague isn’t remotely attractive to him, he lets himself pretend for the sake of Teague’s own fear.

 

Teague’s eyes widen, and he starts to flail, too preoccupied by what Dean seems to be considering to pay attention to Dean’s actual intentions.

 

The first punch rocks Teague’s head to the left.  Dean follows it with a second blow, this time from the left, that snaps Teague’s head back to the right.  The dull, wet sound of bone on meat grows rhythmic as Dean methodically delivers punishment, counting the blows—three, four, five—before at last shifting his weight to rise, planting his bad knee square in Teague’s fat gut, pushing up and driving the wind out of the other man.

 

For all that Teague looks like he’s been tenderized with a meat cleaver, Dean hasn’t done any permanent damage.  The guy’s nose already looked like an advertisement for Boxer’s Anonymous, and he wasn’t all that pretty to begin with. 

 

Still, Dean thinks he’s made his point.  To be sure, though, he pauses with his boots in easy view of the man, whose head lolls woozily to one side.

“You use the word ‘fag’ in my presence again, or call anyone I know or love by that name, or so much as refer to me or Jax or anyone else in any but the politest terms, I won’t stop with a little bitch slapping.  I’ll take you apart, salt the wounds, and string you up for the Scavengers.  You got me?”

 

Dean’ll have to accept the lazy wobble of the man’s head as an affirmative. 

 

The adrenaline rush abandons him a few minutes later, and he sags onto the Cat track and wipes the sweat off his face, a little surprised and a little worried when his hand comes away with a thin trickle of blood that he traces to his boxed ear.

 

Plugging the good ear, though, he finds he can hear muffled noises still, like the world’s underwater, and he figures he’ll be okay.

 

Mostly, he’s disappointed to have discovered Teague was a bigger pussy than he’d expected.  He’d really hoped for more of a fight.

 

Pushing himself out of his slump, Dean goes to the cooler in the back of the Jeep for a beer, eyeing the sun sitting at ten o’clock and deciding that if it’s a victory beer, it doesn’t count as alcohol.

 

After soothing the raised spot over his ear, Dean pops the top and takes a long, grateful swig.  “Ah,” he says loud and long and to no one in particular.

 

From around the other side of the Cat, he thinks he can make out the indistinct sounds of a man trying to pick himself up out of the dirt.  He grins around the mouth of the bottle and savors the next swig.

 

Now that he’s gotten the business of the morning out of the way, Dean busies himself for awhile with going through his personal weapons cache, cleaning the guns, whetting the knives, the soothing, repetitive work he’s relied on so often to take his mind somewhere else.

 

In this case, it travels readily back to Charming, where he wonders what Jax is doing with his day.  Wonders if Tara is any part of it.  Tries not to think too hard about the girl’s doe-eyed neediness and slender little body.  Dean’s been around Jax long enough to know the guy has a type:  the needier the better. 

  
He draws broken things to him like dogs to dead fish.  Wendy.  Tara. 

 

Dean himself, a nasty voice conveniently adds.

 

Dean ignores it in favor of breaking down and cleaning the AK, which doesn’t really need it.

 

Weapons clean and stowed, Dean searches for something else to do.  He hates this waiting around shit. 

 

That’s when his eyes fall on the Cat.

 

Could be there’s some useful shit in the engine.  Never know.

 

He spends a happy few hours stripping down the engines, taking apart whatever he can manage with the toolkit they always keep in the Jeep.

 

Wires.  Starters.  Electrical components.  Spark plugs.  Filters.  Damned if he knows what good they’ll be, but at least it passes the time.

 

He’s ass-up in the engine of a backhoe when he hears Juice talking low to someone, presumably Teague.

 

The big guy’s kept conspicuously out of Dean’ sight, which is about what Dean expected.

 

Well, that or that the guy would try to shoot him when he wasn’t looking.

 

He next hears footsteps approaching, so he pulls himself out of the engine to rest on top of one of the machine’s enormous tires.

 

On the ground beside the tire is a pile of miscellaneous big engine parts, two red checked thermoses, four titty magazines, assorted tobacco products (chaw and cigarettes), a half a pack of Big Red, a Rand McNally road atlas, a pair of men’s boots (size nine and a half), two yellow rain slickers, and a stack of assorted hard hats.

 

Juice grins.  “Looks like I wasn’t the only one doin’ recon.”

 

Dean lowers himself down from the tire carefully, returning the kid’s smile.  “Yeah, pretty decent haul, I guess, though hell if I know what we’re going to do with half of this shit.”

 

“I see you and Teague talked.”  Juice’s smile grows shark-like.

 

Dean nods, assuming a mock-serious expression.  “I’m afraid we had a difference of opinion, but we settled it like gentlemen.”

 

“Dja knee him in the balls?”

 

Dean snorts a laugh and starts picking up scavenged goods.  Juice falls in to help.

 

“You have any luck?”

 

Like that, Juice’s smile is gone.  “Yeah,” he says.

 

“Bad?”

 

“Yeah,” he says again.  “We might be fucked.”

 

“Save it for church,” Dean suggests, moving back toward the Jeep with his prizes.  Juice follows.

 

Once they’ve loaded everything up and gassed up the Jeep from the cans they keep in back, they look for Teague, who’s nowhere in sight. 

 

“Don’t suppose we could just leave him here,” Dean remarks hopefully.

  
Juice shakes his head.  “Jax made me promise I’d bring both of you back alive.”

 

“Damn.”

 

They wait awhile, the mid-day sun starting to slide toward the western horizon.  It took them twelve hours to get there.  They’ll be out of daylight before they can get back again.

  
“We gonna travel at night?”

 

Juice turns a grave face to Dean.  “We don’t have a choice, man.  Every minute’s going to count.”

 

A finger of fear worms its way through Dean’s gut at the kid’s expression, but he keeps from showing it.  Instead, he says, “If he’s not back in five, we gotta leave without him.”

 

“He could be out there bleeding internally,” Juice suggests conversationally.

  
“Nah, it’s mostly cosmetic.”

 

“Head injury,” Juice offers.

 

“Afraid not,” Dean answers, nodding over Juice’s shoulder.  Teague is slouching into view, head down to hide the worst of the damage Dean inflicted.

 

“Hurry up,” Juice orders, no room for argument in his tone.  When Teague breaks into an awkward but sincere jog, it’s all Dean can do to keep from laughing out loud.

 

He channels the urge into action, climbing into the front seat.  “Shotgun,” he calls peremptorily.  Teague doesn’t argue, doesn’t say a word, just climbs in back, perches himself on the brace, and props the AK on the hatch.

 

They’re on the road heading home seconds after that.

 

*****

 

 

 

 _A lot of the world’s temptations are figments of our own imaginations. We think we want what we can’t have.  Half the time, we discover too late that the thing we most wanted isn’t worth the price of getting it.  The other half of the time, we don’t survive the trying._ (The Book of Sons and Brothers 14:43-46)

Jax hadn’t planned to do the girly thing and watch the Jeep drive out of sight, but from the conspicuous throat-clearing going on behind him, that’s what must’ve happened.

 

He turns to find Chibs scratching his chin and looking awkwardly over Jax’s right shoulder at nothing in particular.

  
“Yeah?”  He adopts a neutral expression, which Chibs answers with a smirk. 

 

“Cat’s away…”

 

“What’s your point, Chibs?”

 

“Lady’s waitin’ for you in the clubhouse.”

 

“What lady—?”  And then he reads in Chibs’ sly expression exactly who it is.

 

He swears fluently under his breath and kicks viciously at the loose gravel in the driveway.  Then he takes a long, hard look up at the sky, the blue of washed-out denim, and sighs through his nose, loud.

 

Chibs has already turned back toward the garage, chuckling.

 

He takes his time heading to the house, wondering how this is all going to go.  Even before he got his gift of uber-sensitivity, Jax could read Tara like nobody else.  Until Dean, he’d have said he could never be that close to another person.  So his reluctance isn’t the product of impatience or dislike. 

 

Discomfort, maybe, and probably some fear.  He knows what he feels for Dean, knows it’s real.  Doesn’t question for a second that they’re meant to be together.  He knew it long before Dean came to accept it, went through hell and death to get Dean back, and he’ll be damned himself before he lets it go.

  
But Tara is the past.  She’s warm spring nights and hot summer days, reckless wide-open road runs, skinny-dipping at the reservoir under a fat August moon, sand in the cracks of his toes and other places, her breath sour with beer, skin sweet with a coconut oil slick. 

 

She’s all the things none of them will have again.

 

But nostalgia isn’t enough, and she’s got to understand that the old world has ended.

 

She’s a ghost.  A laughing girl, ten pounds heavier and eons younger, unreachable now, even if he were stretching out his hands.

 

He’s not.

 

Tara’s leaning against the bar talking low with J.C., who’s leaning over, breasts pushed between her forearms, gum cracking.  They’re obviously talking about Jax, given the way J.C. slides back to her side of the bar and cuts him a guilty look before busying herself with clean glassware.

 

“Hey,” he says, hoping for casual.

 

“Hey.”  Her tone blows any hope for it.  She’s nervous, and he can see the pulse jumping in her throat.  She’s pale, dark circles accentuated under her eyes, and she’s rubbing her hands against her thighs like her palms are sweaty.

 

“You got a minute?” She asks, tilting her head toward the back, where his and Dean’s room is.

 

“Sure,” he answers, turning back toward the hallway to the door outside.

 

She has no choice but to fall in behind him.

 

Out in the sun, she looks paler still, washed out and exhausted.  Something clenches in his gut to see her like this.

  
“You want to go for a ride?” He asks impulsively, maybe thinking of summer days at the reservoir.  Maybe thinking you can’t really talk on a bike.

 

You can get pretty close, though, he realizes too late as she slides her hands around his waist, tucks in close.

  
He can feel the heat of her knees against his hips, and he puts it from his mind as he heads out of the driveway and turns deliberately away from the junker bunker.  He doesn’t want to think about what’s waiting for them out there.  Or that Dean’s out there with it.

 

He skirts the main part of town, shoots out along Meadow, sparsely populated, mostly community gardens now.  People look up when they hear the bike, look up and wave from the green fields.  From the distance of the road they are orange and red and blue bandanas, tanned arms, white teeth.  He feels a warmth of pride and belonging in his chest and grits his teeth, smiling into the wind.

 

Soon enough, they’re at the reservoir access road, and he hesitates, wondering if this is a good idea.  There’s only wreckage at the intersection of what is and what might have been.  He knows this.

 

He turns toward the water, anyway, slowing so he doesn’t skew on the gravel, and stops on the grass and dirt verge.

 

Ahead of them, an important part of Charming’s freedom spreads out like a blue diamond, reflecting the sky.

 

And that’s how he thinks of it now—so many gallons of fresh water for drinking and bathing and irrigation.  Their most precious resource, what stands between them and ruin besides a hand of holy fire.

 

With a jolt, Jax discovers he can’t see it any other way.  Certainly not as the romantic spot it once was.

  
By the look on Tara’s face as she climbs off the bike and walks around to face him, she’s seeing the Jax who used to be, the wild, wicked kid only a few bumps away from a bad wreck.

 

“Remember when we used to come here?” She asks unnecessarily.

 

He nods. “Yeah.  Lot’s changed since then,” he adds, also unnecessarily.

So far, nothing’s being said that means a damn.

 

“I miss—“

 

He’s at her side and then passing her, heading for the packed earth at the edge of the water, for the small, flat, palm-sized stones there.  He picks one up, pauses, flings it out, watching as it skims the surface, trailing an eternity of rings.

 

“You could always make them go so far.”  She manufactures a laugh, but there’s no humor in it, nothing at all, and suddenly it’s all just desperate and pathetic and he knows he’s made a terrible mistake in coming here.

 

“Tara—“ he starts.

  
She cuts him off with a hand on his lips.

  
“Don’t,” she shushes him, moving right up into his space, until they’re touching at the knees and the belly, and she’s straining up on her toes to replace her fingers with her lips.

 

Jax doesn’t want to hurt her—not in any way—but he can’t stop himself from gripping her shoulders and setting her back a few steps.

  
“Tara, no.”

 

“Why?” Her voice is sharp, a little high, and he can hear the tears in it, the way they tighten her throat.  “Because you don’t like girls?  I don’t believe that, Jax.”

 

She tries to step toward him again, but he puts his hands up and shakes his head.

  
“No, Tara.  It isn’t like that.  I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

 

“You can’t possibly love him.”

 

He narrows his eyes at the tone of her voice, the proprietary way, like she knows him.  Like she knows what’s best.

 

“A lot’s changed since you left, Tara.” 

 

She hears the emphasis, the blame in his words, and her lips tighten.

 

“But we can have that again, Jax.  You remember what it was like here?  Diving into the reservoir on a hot night, the cool water running over our bodies?  You remember how you’d kiss me until I could hardly breathe? You remember how I looked naked in the moonlight?” 

 

He does.  How could he not?  She was the siren singing in his dreams every night for years after she left.

 

She was every woman he fucked, no matter what body was beneath him.

 

She’s reaching now for the hem of her tee-shirt, but he can’t let it get that far. 

 

He reaches to stop the motion, trapping her hands in fists around the cloth.

 

“Too much has changed, Tara.”

 

“But we can go back—“

 

“No!  No, we can’t.  Look around you, Tara.  This reservoir isn’t for swimming anymore.  Do you see any picnickers?  Any playground equipment?  This isn’t a park, Tara.  It’s a precious resource.  There are three guys in sniper’s nests with M16s posted at intervals on the perimeter.  They’re watching us right now.  Things aren’t the same at all.  I’m not.  You’re not.”

 

He sees the moment she gets it, the way shock drains the bright fever-spots of excitement from her cheeks.  The way she sways as he releases her hands and steps out of her reach once more.  The way her eyes dart nervously along the tree line.

 

“I want to go back,” she says at last, voice small.

  
“Tara—“ He starts, sorry and sick with it.

  
“Just take me home.  Back.  Take me back.”

 

He nods, hands her a helmet, puts on his own.

 

He drops her at her father’s place, and she gets off without a word, securing the helmet on the back of the bike and walking up the driveway, back straight, shoulders tight.

 

Jax feels like shit, but he’s relieved, too.  At least that’s done.

 

He should know better.

 

At the clubhouse, he finds Bobby and Sam working on Bobby’s old hog, the kid crouched in a sharp-angled pose, knees around his ears, Bobby hunkered down breathing hard with a wrench in his hand.

 

“Hey,” he says, passing them, the kid’s eyes lighting up before he says, “Hey,” back, cool-like.  Jax can’t help but smile to himself.

 

Inside, Opie’s sitting with his father, a map of Charming spread out in front of them, red Xs and black circles marking his organizational system for housing.

 

“What’s up?” He asks, just for something to say.  He trusts his VP to do the job.

 

Ope shrugs, tosses down his marker, sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose.  “We got too many rowdies in one neighborhood, but we don’t know how to spread ‘em out without bothering the good families.”

 

“We need Hale’s guys to knock some heads?”

 

Ope raises an eyebrow.  “You’re okay with that?”

 

Jax gives him a quizzical look, which changes to something else when he realizes Ope’s serious. 

 

“Last I checked, I’m President of the Sons of Anarchy, not Grannies for God, Ope.  We need to put the hurt on these assholes, get ‘em to settle down, we do it.  We gotta throw some of ‘em out on their asses, I’m all for that, too.  ‘sup to you.”

 

“I just thought…”

 

“What?”  Jax really isn’t sure where Ope’s coming from.

  
“Hell, boy, he thought you were gettin’ a little light in your loafers.”

 

“Dad!”

 

“That true, Ope?”  He’s proud of himself for how calmly it comes out.  “You think I’m some kinda pussy?  You think where I put my dick decides how I do my job?”

 

“No, it’s not—.  I didn’t think—.”  Ope blows out a frustrated breath and pinches the bridge of his nose again.  “I thought you were tryin’ to have a society like your father wanted.  You know…safe, peaceful.” 

 

“And you think we’re gonna get that by hugging and singing Kumbaya?”

 

“No!”

 

“Then shut ‘em down, Ope.  Tonight.  You need me to come along?”

 

“Nah, I got it.  I’ll take Blue and Stewart.”  The survivalists were always up for a little violence, a quality Jax appreciated in them.

 

“Alright, then.  Anything else I should know about?  You maybe need some help coordinating your wardrobe or redecorating your kitchen?”

 

“Shut up.”  But Ope is smiling, shaking his head as he rolls up the map and snaps a rubberband over it.

 

“How ‘bout you, Piney?  You feelin’ lonely?  I can probably scare up a Daddy for ya.”

 

“I’ll show you who’s your Daddy, kid,” Piney says, grabbing his crotch.

 

Jax laughs and says, “I gotta see how Chuck’s settlin’ in.  He at 28 Woodrow?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“That was the Slawsons,” Jax observes, nothing in his tone to give away what he’s feeling.  Sometimes it surprises him how clearly he can remember the names and faces of people he didn’t save.  The old couple had been sick when shit started to go down.  They got sicker as medicines ran low, as the air got heavy with sulfur and the sky darkened.

 

Ed Slawson had died not a day after Arlene, his wife of fifty-six years.

 

“Yeah,” Ope offers, and in his tone is the only memorial the couple’s likely to have.

 

“Channel ten?”  Jax asks, tapping the walkie on his belt.

“Yep.”

 

“Later.”

 

Ope grunts acknowledgement of parting at Jax’s receding back.

 

Woodrow’s a short drive from the clubhouse, a street of modest ranches that once upon a time was occupied mostly by retired couples and families just starting out. 

 

Now, Jax notices a blocked-up but tricked out Honda CRX in one carport, a truck trailer in a driveway three doors down, water hose and orange extension cord suggesting that there’s an extended family or group staying at that house, spilling out into the available space the trailer affords. 

 

The Slawsons’ place looks unlived in, but when Jax knocks, he hears the shuffle of hesitant feet and can practically feel himself being looked over through the peephole before the lock disengages and the door opens.

 

“Hey, uh…hi.”  Chuck says, looking behind Jax like the biker’s somehow hiding Dean’s greater bulk behind him.

 

“Dean’s on a mission,” he explains.  “Told him I’d show you around.”

 

“Oh.  That’s—that’s great.  Just let me.  Uh… .”

 

“Get your coat?” Jax suggests.

 

Chuck snorts nervously.  “Yeah.  I don’t have one.  So…”

 

“I’ll take you by the thrift store later.  You can pick up what you need there.”

 

“I don’t have any money.”

 

Jax shrugs.  “We don’t use money.  Mostly we barter.  You got anything you’re good at, work you can trade for things?”

 

Chuck laughs nervously, obviously a habit, and shakes his head, staring at the ground abstractedly.  “Uh, no.  No, not really.  I mean…I used to write stories.  Books.  You know, about—about the end of the world.  But…well, no fresh subject matter, I guess.”

 

Jax hears something in Chuck’s tone, senses what he’s leaving out.  “These stories…were they about Dean and Sam?”

 

Another huff of not-quite-laughter.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I sort of got these visions?  And they were of Sam and Dean’s lives.  Only I didn’t know that at first.  Not until…later.  When things started to get weird.  I mean, more weird.  It’s relative, you know, when you’re a prophet of the Lord.  Anyway, I guess maybe I should shut up.”

 

And he does.

Jax gives him a steady look, wondering, sees in Chuck a resolve he didn’t expect to find but shouldn’t be surprised about.  After all, Chuck is a friend of Dean’s.  Dean doesn’t hang with pussies.  Jax should know.

 

“I’m not gonna ask you questions about Dean behind his back.  I got anything I want to know, I’ll ask him myself.”

 

Chuck nods, somewhat convulsively, and then looks Jax in the eye.  “You’re good for him.”

 

It’s eerily similar in tone and words to something his mother said to Dean not long before she died.  Jax masks his sudden uneasiness by turning toward the bike.

 

“You ride bitch?”

 

Chuck laughs again.  “Uh…is that a biker term?  Cool.”  Jax just stares.  “It’s cool, man.  Yeah, okay.  Whatever.  I mean, I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle, but it can’t be hard, right?  Is it hard?”  
  


He sounds so uncertain, so genuinely uncool that Jax can’t help but kind of like the guy.

 

“It’s easy.  You’re gonna like it.  C’mon.”

 

“Oh.”  Chuck pats his shirt pockets, pants pockets front and back.  “Keys…”

 

Jax shakes his head.  “Don’t worry about it.  We don’t have a theft problem in Charming.”

 

“Right.  Bikers.  Right.”

 

Jax laughs a little at that.  The guy clearly has almost no filter.

 

“Get on,” he urges, giving Chuck a quick primer on how to avoid spilling them both onto the asphalt.  Then, they’re off for a tour of Chuck’s new home.

 

Jax is usually too busy to get new people settled in, so he doesn’t often have the chance to see his town through the eyes of a stranger.  He finds he likes it.

  
Chuck is appropriately gleeful about Miriam’s Café, the Jetts’ grocery, Floyd’s barber shop (now run by a decent guy named Merle), and the thrift store, where he picks up some jeans, shirts, and a lightweight jacket, promising in exchange to swing by the Home for Story Hour on Thursday.

 

“The Home?” He asks in an undertone as they leave the store.

 

“Orphanage,” Jax explains.  “Not too far from your place.  You can probably walk it.  ‘less you want a bike.  I could get you one now.”

 

Chuck stops on the sidewalk and gives Jax a deer-in-headlights look.  “Uh…it’s not that I don’t….  I mean, it’s cool that you—.  But they’re not really my thing.  They’re fine.  I mean, cool, whatever.  But I’m more a Volkswagen guy, and well, I just never really thought about-“

 

“Chill, man.  I’m talking about a bicycle.  We have a limit on motor vehicles.  And new people don’t get them.  You have to stay awhile before you get a ration book for gasoline.”

“Oh!  Oh, that’s cool.  Good for the environment.  Go green.”

 

Jax looks at him for a long second just to make sure Chuck’s not yanking his chain.

 

“We don’t have an endless supply of gas, Chuck.  Gotta be careful with it.  Bikes are kept at the impound behind the Sheriff’s. Gotta sign it out, but it won’t cost you anything.  I can drop you off there after we swing by the clubhouse, see Opie about the issues with your house.”

 

Jax had noticed the listing porch support and had quizzed a reluctant Chuck on other things that might need fixing up. 

 

Sack’s got one of Hale’s guy’s trucks up on the lift, is fixing something with the exhaust.  He waves his wrench at Jax and Chuck and gets back to work.

 

“That’s Half-Sack,” Jax says. 

 

Chuck laughs.  “’cause of the war injury?”

 

Jax stops on a dime, swiveling, making Chuck slide to a stop too or barrel into him.

 

“How did you know that?”

 

“What?  About the injury?”  Chuck shrugs.  “I didn’t think it was a secret with his name and everything.  I didn’t mean to—“

 

“’It’s _not_ a secret.  I asked you how you knew it.”

 

“Sometimes I just know things, you know?  Like…fragments come through.  I can’t tell sometimes if they’re things I’m supposed to know or if they got dumped there.  I didn’t mean to piss you off or anything.  You’ve been real good to me.”

 

Jax shakes his head, mutters, “Great, another one,” under his breath.  To Chuck, he says instead, “Never mind.  Not your fault.  C’mon, we’ll see if Ope’s around.”

 

Ope’s bike’s parked in the line-up, but that doesn’t mean much.  Rita’s gotten a job up at the town hall, and she has her own wheels now.  More and more lately, Ope’s been riding with her.  They’ve all gotten kind of domesticated, Jax reflects, considering who he’s had on his bike the past two days.

 

That leads him to think of Tara walking away from him up the driveway of her dead father’s house.  He blinks the image away and opens the door to the clubhouse.

 

Chuck is stumbling behind him, eyes adjusting to the dim light of the hall, when Jax comes out into the rec area to find Sam at the pool table with Chibs, apparently trouncing the guy by the sounds the latter is making.

 

“The kid’s a shark,” Chibs laughs, raising an eyebrow at Chuck and then looking back to Jax.

 

“Chibs, Sam, this is Chuck, a friend of Dean’s from before.  Chuck, Chibs and Sam.  Sam lives at the Home.”

 

“Hey,” Chuck says, taking an uncertain step toward the center of the room. 

 

Jax sees the second Chuck’s eyes really take in Sam because the ex-prophet’s face pales a shade and his smile morphs into something plastic and sickly, unconvincing to anyone who’s paying attention.

 

“What is it?” Jax asks low, at Chuck’s side in an instant.  “What’s wrong?”

 

A glance at the kid tells Jax he’s not doing anything unusual, just lining up a shot to knock the last of the stripes into a corner pocket.

 

Chuck shakes his head, mumbles a weak-throated, “Nothing.”

 

“Bullshit,” Jax growls, shoving Chuck hard in the shoulder and herding him down the length of the room, to where they can talk freely without being overheard.  “What did you see?”

 

But Chuck is wearing that surprising resolve again, his jaw jumping as he grinds his teeth, shoulders twitching like he wants to throw them back in challenge.  Jax sees the way the nervous man’s eyes take in Chibs, Bobby and Piney at the bar, Vita and J.C. at a table sorting silverware.

 

He’s not exactly surrounded.  But then, Chuck’s not exactly heroic.

  
Still, he meets Jax’s eyes when he says, “It’s not for you.  I’ll tell Dean when it’s time.”

 

“You’ll tell _me_ now,” Jax asserts, menacing him with his height.

 

Chuck sighs like his heart is broken and his shoulders slump.

 

 _Got him_ , Jax thinks.

 

“You gonna hit me, go ahead.  But this message isn’t for you.  It’s only for Dean.  He wants to share it with you after I’m done telling it, that’s his business.”

 

“There a problem?” Ope’s deep voice makes Chuck jump a little, though he had to have seen the big guy coming.

 

Chuck doesn’t answer, looking to Jax for it.

 

Jax is pissed, sure.  Chuck’s expression, the way his face got, makes Jax uneasy, makes something slick and cold slide through his gut.  But he admires the ex-prophet’s balls and finally lets out a half laugh, not unlike one of Chuck’s nervous ones, and waves a hand at Ope. 

 

“Nah, we’re cool.  Chuck was just tellin’ me about some issues he’s got with his house.  Figure maybe you could help him out?”

 

Jax has turned so Ope’s in his peripheral when his VP nods and says, “Sure.  Come on over here.  I’ll get the clipboard.”

 

Chuck is a wasted shadow in Opie’s wake, but Jax can’t help feel like the little man has a lot more power than Jax does.  It’s not that he’s jealous of it.  It just makes him nervous.  He doesn’t like unforeseen variables, and he feels like Chuck’s full of them.

“Fuck,” Jax says, looking at Sam long and hard, wishing he could see into the kid’s head and figure out what makes him so scary.

 

Other than his wicked bank shot, that is.

 

“Good work,” Jax says, slapping Sam on the shoulder.  “You leave Chibs anything?”

 

The kid riffles through the stack of ration chits in his hand and smirks.  “Not my problem, man.  You play with the big boys, you gotta be prepared to lose big, too.”

 

Jax laughs.  “You ready to head out?” He asks, taking in Sam and then turning to shoot Chuck a look, too.

 

“I’ve got it,” Ope says.  “We’re gonna swing by Mickey O’s place, pick up some supplies.”

 

“I guess that just leaves you and me, Sam.”

 

“Cool!  Can I ride up front?”

 

“No.”

 

“Aw, man, I hate riding bitch.”

 

“Get used to it,” Jax suggests, moving toward the hallway.  “If you’re gonna be a Prospect some day, you gotta get used to takin’ the shit jobs.”

 

“No way!”

 

The kid’s incredulity and glee make Jax’s chest a little tight.  It doesn’t seem possible that in this world there can still be innocence like Sam’s.

 

“Who do I got to kill?” Sam asks in the next breath, and the feeling passes.

 

“What makes you think we kill people, Sam?”

 

Sam’s laugh is far too grown up for his narrow chest.  “C’mon, man, you didn’t get to be the only power in town by passing out cookies and helping old ladies across the street.”

 

They’re in the wide gravel lot now, the sun beating down, Sam squinting up at Jax, who’s stopped and crouched down to the kid’s level.

 

“We kill to keep people safe, Sam.  To keep Charming safe so that kids like you have a place to call home.  And so that nothing bad can screw it up for us.”

 

“Real altruists, huh?”  The scorn is not more surprising than the word choice, and Jax lets his surprise show.

  
“I ain’t a dummy just ‘cause I didn’t go to school for a long time.  I know things.”

 

“Okay,” Jax says, conceding that he’s misjudged Sam.  “But my point stands:  we don’t kill for fun.  We do it because we have to to survive.  You got that?”

“Yeah, alright, fine.  You’re all fuckin’ saints.  Can we go?”

 

Jax doesn’t know whether to be pissed at the kid’s attitude or relieved by it.  For once he’s acting his age, as if Jax has somehow disappointed Sam’s expectations of the Sons by explaining their killing laws.

 

Sam shakes off some of the sullen when he sees Jax’s bike.  He runs a loving hand over the Reaper in its ghostly blue-grey lines, lets the hand trail over the seat and then stands back while Jax climbs on and backs her out.

 

He’s up like a monkey, grouching in Jax’s ear about the brain bucket but putting it on anyway, and then they’re out on the streets of Charming.  Jax takes a circuitous route, heads out to Meadow again, where he can open up without the danger of hitting anyone.

 

Sam is whooping in his ear when Jax slows at the reservoir road and turns in a wide tear-drop to head back to town.

 

When he drops Sam off at the Home, Alex is in the driveway wiring the tailgate of his beater up.  Jax waves and watches until Sam is standing beside the truck talking to the Home’s jack of all trades before he motors off.

 

The rest of the day is taken up with the usual responsibilities of office.  There are ration reports to read, security issues to clear up with Hale, clubhouse business of a completely mundane variety to sort out.  If someone had told him five years ago that this is what being president of the Sons of Anarchy would be like, Jax would’ve laughed and maybe hit the guy.

 

Still, he doesn’t miss the old days as much as some might think.  Up on the roof in the darkness, sweet smoke swirling down his throat, Jax concedes that despite the obvious negatives of his current situation, there are some pretty positive things, too.

 

Like Dean.

 

He lets the drift of his thoughts snag on his lover for awhile, feels himself getting half-hard at the image of Dean sprawled out on their bed down below, head thrown back, neck arched, filth spilling from his lips.  Jax doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of the way Dean sounds when he tries to keep in a shout, the breathy desperation of it, and the little noises he makes in the back of his throat when Jax is driving into him from behind and he has to fight to keep from slamming into the headboard.

 

Yeah, it’s good to be king sometimes.

 

His lust is dampened when he remembers where Dean might be, the kind of danger he faces.  It’s not that he doesn’t know that Dean can take care of himself.  Jax wasn’t lying when he said that to Dean in this very spot not twenty-four hours ago.

 

It’s just that Jax remembers too clearly how it felt to be without Dean.  In the days he believed Dean was dead, Jax functioned alright, but there wasn’t any feeling to it.  He ran on automatic, did okay, he guessed.  But nothing mattered, really, for himself. 

 

Since Dean’s been back, Jax has felt like he can take a deep breath again, like things taste and feel the way they’re supposed to.

 

Still, just because he’s been housebroken doesn’t mean Jax isn’t sometimes restless for the road.  He entertains himself for a few minutes with the idea of a trip to Arizona, just him and Dean, maybe stop in to see Sari, spend some time exploring the reservation.  It’s sanctuary, safe harbor.  They could do it.

 

Below, the squeaky hinges of the clubhouse door alert him a second before he hears, “Jax?” called softly in his direction.

 

Ope.

 

“Yeah, Ope?”

 

“Hale’s on the phone.  There’s a group at the gate.”

 

Sighing, Jax pinches the spliff.  “Be right there.”

 

 _It’s good to be king_ , he reminds himself as he climbs down the ladder and heads inside to call the sheriff back.  If the voice in his head sounds a little uncertain, he’s willing to ignore it.  He’s got too much to do to listen to whining, anyway.

 

Their divine watchdog took care of two of the six who’d showed up the night before.  Jax conducted the entrance interviews in the waiting room at the hospital and then handed them over to Blue, who fills in as housing manager on the night shift sometimes so Ope doesn’t have to.

 

Over breakfast, Ope had tells him that one of the three was HIV positive, another had tested positive for Hep C.

 

“Quarantine?”  His VP asks, face carefully indifferent.  These are human beings they’re talking about, but sometimes that can’t always matter as much as they’d like.

 

“For the Hep case, yeah.”

 

They have a wing of an old nursing home fixed up for long-term isolation cases.  There are usually one or two in residence at any given time.  Lot of people who managed to survive the apocalypse still had problems.  Sometimes it was mental, sometimes infectious, like with Hepatitis.  They can’t take chances with the lives of their people, especially if they’re the only significant population left alive on the planet.

 

Not counting Scavengers, which he doesn’t.

 

Jax hates to throw some poor sap in the brig just for having a blood disease, but there’s no way he can let the guy walk around until he can be sure of the man’s intentions.

 

Biological warfare isn’t above the Scavengers, Jax guesses.  Up till now, they’ve mostly hoped it hadn’t yet occurred to the assholes.

 

“Guy seem like he’s on the level?”

 

Ope’s shrug indicates he’s unsure.

 

“Send Doc Mason to see him, then.”

 

‘Doc’ Mason is a twenty-six year old former grad student in psychology who’d shown up about a month after the big event.  At first, they’d been doubtful that the petite red-headed woman was going to be much help, but she’d proven invaluable in evaluating some of their more questionable newest citizens.

 

“HIV the kid?”

 

Ope nods.

 

The boy was maybe seventeen, rail thin, looked like every mile of the road between his home-town (Topeka) and here was bad.

 

“How bad?”

 

“Tara says he might be okay if they can get him on a cycle.”

 

“We got the meds?”

 

“Enough.”

 

“Where’d Blue put him?”

 

“The Hostel.”

 

The Home was for kids up to sixteen.  After that, teenagers who had no one to watch out for them lived at The Hostel, a grammar school they’d converted to a kind of group home.  There were two house moms, a cook, a couple of guys who took turns on night watch. 

 

Mostly, the kids at the Hostel were old enough to take care of themselves.  When they turned nineteen, they were eligible to apply for their own residences, but a lot of the time, the kids stayed on to help out new arrivals.

 

“What about the other two?”

 

“Good to go.  Blue put ‘em on Evans.  Upstairs two-bedroom.”

 

Jax nods absently and tosses back the dregs of his coffee.  The mom and her twelve-year-old son had seemed pretty together given their harrowing journey.  Jax is always surprised by people’s strength, no matter how many times he’s witnessed it.

 

“You gonna see Martin out at the Farms?”

 

Jax sighs.  He really hates conversations about fertilizer and crop rotation.  And he trusts Martin Ellery to know his business.  But the man still asks for Jax’s approval on big projects, even if it’s clear by now that Jax has no idea what the difference between chicken shit and cow manure is besides the smell.

 

Then he brightens.  “Hey, where’d we end up stashing that old hunter, Grady?  He knows something about farming.”

 

Ope smirks.  “You can’t pawn Grady off on Martin, Jax.  You know the guy’ll want to talk to you.”

 

Jax waves off Ope’s objections.  “I’ll appoint Grady my agricultural liaison.”

 

“Right,” Ope says, laughing short and sharp.  “This isn’t fucking Washington, man.  You can’t build a better bureaucracy.”

 

“No,” Jax answers, smiling like he’s got cream in his whiskers.  “But I can get out of listening to a discussion on the merits of nitrogen in the soil.”

 

“He’s on Burrows, west of Main.”  Ope consults the ubiquitous clipboard.  “One thirty-seven.”

 

“Great.  I’ll see you later, then.”

 

“I’m taking some stuff over to Chuck’s later with Mickey O, see about his tub and the porch support.”

 

Jax waves a hand in acknowledgement and heads out, fishing the Impala keys from his pocket and wondering how it is he’s ended up here, of all places.

 

Shaking his head at the weirdness of the world, he heads for the center of town to see if Grady’s interested in helping out.  He tells himself he has no ulterior motive for bringing the hunter along.  It’s not like he’s interested in hearing what the old guy might have to tell about the Winchesters.

 

Grady narrows his eyes speculatively to find Jax at his door on his second morning in Charming.

  
“You need something?”

 

Jax nods.  “I was hopin’ you might be interested in taking a ride out to the Farms to meet our agricultural manager.  He’s gonna want to talk about crop rotation and shit, and I haven’t got a clue.  I’d appreciate the advice.”

 

Grady looks Jax over for a span of seconds.  “You don’t trust this guy?”

 

“What?”  He’s startled by the suspicion in Grady’s face, by how much the man’s expression reminds him just then of Dean.  “No, I trust Martin.  He’s a good man.  I just thought…”

 

“Thought you could get out of a load of shit talk.”  Grady half-winks, so fast Jax almost misses it, and then smirks knowingly.

 

“Yeah,” Jax laughs, owning up. 

 

“Alright.  Let me get my coat.  I wouldn’t mind seeing the Farms myself.”

 

On the road, Jax watches Grady on his periphery, sees the way the old man takes things in, watchful and deceptively at ease in his seat.  He’s seen that posture before often enough to recognize it.

 

“So, you never hunted with Dean’s dad?”

 

 “Nope.”

 

The man’s tone clearly indicates he’s not going to offer more.  Jax tries again.

 

“But you knew Bobby?” 

 

“Ay-yep.”  Definite and final.

 

“What was he like?”

 

Grady’s eyes turn to Jax, and he can feel the weight of the man’s regard.

  
“You have a particular reason for asking these questions, son?”

 

Flushing, Jax shakes his head.  “Just curious.”

 

“Maybe you’d best save the questions for that boy of yours.”

 

It’s Jax’s turn to give Grady a heavy look.

 

“No judgment.  I’m just sayin’ that I see the way you look at him.  ‘f I know a Winchester, I know he don’t like people talkin’ behind his back.  He’s got something to tell you about Bobby Singer, he’ll say it.  Otherwise, there ain’t nothin’ this side of hell will drag it out of him, and precious little in hell itself that would, neither.”

 

Jax thinks he knows one thing in hell that might, but he keeps it to himself.

 

Just to be saying something, Jax asks, “How’re you settling in?”

 

“Fine.  ‘s nice to have an actual roof over my head.  And not to have to lay down quite so much salt at night.”

 

Jax cuts him a corner-eyed look.  “You still ward your house?”

 

“Just ‘cause the ghoulies outside of town can’t get in doesn’t mean there isn’t some evil hereabouts might want to cause trouble.”

 

Jax feels his shoulders tense, tries not to take the man’s tone as criticism. 

 

“We haven’t had any ‘trouble’ like that in Charming.”

 

“Give it time.”  There’s something ominous and knowing in the man’s tone that sets Jax’s teeth to grinding.

 

“You sayin’ we’ve got evil people?  ‘cause I think you saw what happens when they try to come in.”

 

Grady sighs audibly.  “Son, you got yourself a nice town here, and I don’t mean to spit in your soup.  But it’s been my experience that anywhere there’s people, there’s evil.  You’ve had your share of experience with that, too, I’m sure.”

 

This time, there’s no mistaking the pointed nature of his inflection.

 

Jax nods, acknowledging the truth of the man’s words even as the message tightens the muscles in his jaw.

 

“People aren’t all of a sudden gonna get religion, apocalypse or no apocalypse.  And there ain’t no handbook for after-the-end-times.  Seems to me caution is the better part of keeping in one piece.”

 

“Fair enough,” Jax says after a minute.  “But you could be wrong.  Maybe we’re supposed to build something good here in Charming, something that doesn’t have the same problems the world had before.”

 

Grady’s snort is eloquent and loud.  “You’ll get all new ones, then.”

 

“Yeah, alright.”  He manages to keep his tone civil only with an effort.  He hates this sage-like bullshit from the old guy, like age and experience give him the keys to all knowledge.

 

Some small part of Jax recognizes that he’s being petulant.

 

Thankfully, the Farms swing into view and he can busy himself with parking and making introductions.

 

Despite the fact that Martin Ellery is an aging California hippie with high ideas about organic farming, he gets on surprisingly well with Grady, whose first name, it turns out, is Lloyd.

 

Jax leaves the two talking about spring-fed irrigation and wanders over to the chicken coop, where an impressive number of hens are scratching at feed and squabbling amongst themselves. 

 

The Farms were once a plot of land that had been intended for development.  The Sons had been stalling the project for years, fearing it would bring in a lot of commuters from Stockton and make Charming into another bedroom community for a bunch of asshole yuppies. A different kind of apocalypse took care of things for them.

 

Only the showcase home had been built, and even that had never been finished.  Now, Martin Ellery lives there with his wife, Asia, and their three grown kids, Summer, Autumn, and Bud.  Bud’s apparently short for some Hindu name Jax has never bothered to learn to pronounce.

 

Anyway, they’ve fixed it up nice, he notices, admiring the wrap-around porch, complete with hand-made rockers, and the wind-chimes that peal and tinkle in the warm midday breeze.

 

The coop sits forty feet from their side door, the big barn that stores their farming equipment twenty yards after that.  A smaller barn with paddocks houses their mule teams.  Martin likes to farm the old-fashioned way when he can, and Jax can’t complain ‘cause it saves them having to make diesel runs.  Diesel’s hard to come by and getting scarcer by the day.

 

When he’s finally had enough waiting around, Jax wanders over and gives the two a look, and Martin says, “I like this fella.  He’s got a good head for growing.”

 

Grady grunts a kind of passive acknowledgement and goes back to inspecting the irrigation trench Martin had been working on.

 

“You about ready to head back?”

 

“I’m gonna stay here, lend Martin a hand.  He’ll give me a ride back later.”

 

“Alright.  Martin, you got anything to report?”

 

“Nah, things are just about as usual.  I could use more manure, if Tso’s got it, but otherwise we’re gettin’ along fine.”

 

“I’ll keep it in mind if I see them around.”  Lom and Meghan Tso run the beef cattle farm on Charming’s southwest side.

 

A round of handshakes later, he’s heading back to town, taking it easy and enjoying the sunshine and the false sense of freedom the road always brings him, even when he’s trapped inside tons of steel.

 

That feeling fades as he pulls into the yard at Teller-Morrow to see a red-faced Chibs shouting at one of Hale’s guys, Poke Henry, who must outweigh the Scotsman by at least a hundred pounds.

 

“Hey!” He shouts when he’s ten feet out and closing.

 

Chibs stops and turns an eye toward Jax, and Poke takes it as an opening to throw a punch.  Jax is there in time, grabbing the guy’s meaty wrist, digging his fingers into the tendons and turning the arm up and back, using his body weight to make it hurt.

 

Poke growls and thrashes, tossing his head back to nail Jax in the face, but Jax expects it, dodges and shoves the guy away from him to give them room to get into it if that’s where it’s going.

 

Once he’s got his arm back and has turned around again, though, Poke seems to come back to himself, taking in who it is he’s about to fight and the ring of angry Sons that has appeared since the shouting started.

 

Sack’s got a wrench, Bobby a tire iron.

 

Piney levels a shotgun with steady hands.

 

J.C.’s at the door with the walkie in her hand, poised to call in the sheriff or his people.

 

Either way, Poke’s not too dumb to know he’s outmanned.

 

“What seems to be the problem?” Jax asks. He’s tempted to sneer, but he keeps it to himself.  Sometimes being the leader sucks.

 

“This asshole wants to charge me more for the repairs on my truck.”

 

Jax notices the Ford 450 is still up on the lift, where Sack had been working on it the day before.

 

“It’s a lot worse than we thought when we quoted ‘im the first time.  I told ‘im he can have her back now if he wants, but she’ll be leakin’ oil inside o’ three days, and no mistake.”

 

“It ain’t just the gasket seal,” Sack adds.  “There’s a crack.”

 

Jax turns his eyes back to Poke.  “What was the original quote?”

 

“Riding shotgun on a two-day supply run.”

 

“Chibs?”

 

“I told ‘im ta make it three days, ‘t least.”

 

“We got a replacement already?”

 

“’n that’s the other thin’.  We gotta machine one outta another model.”

 

“Bullshit!  I’m not takin’ no machined parts.”

 

“This look like an Auto Zone to you, asshole?” Jax asks, voice low and ugly.  “You want an original, go find yourself a wreck on I-5 and pull it outta there.  Otherwise, put your ass up for another day’s work and you can have your truck back by Monday.  What’ll it be?”

 

Poke’s face is red with embarrassment and anger, but his “Fuck it” is concession enough.  He stalks out of the yard scattering gravel with every stride.

 

“Take your time on his job,” Jax says to Sack, raising his eyebrow meaningfully.

 

“I could probably lose a wrench in there,” the kid agrees, smiling back and returning to the bay.

 

Chibs heads to the garage office muttering Gaelic imprecations, and Jax follows Piney and Bobby back inside.

 

The clubhouse interior is cool and dim.  J.C. is behind the bar when Jax enters, wiping it down.

 

“Beer,” he says, sitting at a table.  Her “Sure, Jax,” comes back wrong, though, and it makes him look at her.  She’s wearing the careful expression of someone who doesn’t think it’s in her best interest to let you know she’s pissed.

 

“What?” He asks as she brings the beer over to him.

 

The bottle strikes the table harder than necessary, the head foaming out of the mouth and spilling down the sides.

 

“Hey,” he says, stopping her with a hand on her wrist.  She swings around, face lit by anger with an edge of betrayal, and he lets her go only to push a chair away from the table with his foot and say, “Sit.”

 

She does, with deliberate care, knees together and eyes fixed somewhere to his left.

 

“What’s the problem, J.C.?” 

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Bull.  Spill it.”  He uses his best cajoling voice, the one his mother used to say could charm the paint off a chain-link.

 

“Dean’s a good guy.”

 

“Yeah, he is,” Jax answers automatically, already well out of his depth in this attempt at interrogation.

“You shouldn’t run around behind his back.”  She says it fast, words all together in a huddle, hunching her shoulders up like she’s expecting violence.

 

“J.C., what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

 

“You and Tara at the reservoir.  Elmore saw you.  And T-rod.  They said you were ‘cozy.’”

 

Since T-rod’s talk comes from the street, and unless ‘cozy’ meant something special in South Central, Jax has got to guess the description is Elmore’s—Elmore, who has the brain of a mouse and the sense of a … really stupid mouse.

 

“Nothin’ happened, J.C.”

 

Her expression is eloquent.

 

“Seriously, nothing.  Tara’s just…confused.  And lonely.  She’s been through a lot, okay?  But nothing happened.”

 

“And even if it had, it’s none of your business, sweetbutt,” Piney chimes in from the bar, back still to the both of them.

 

Jax smirks at J.C., one of those looks that says, ‘Let the old guy bitch,’ and J.C. returns it with a small smile of her own.

  
“Really?” She mouths.

 

“Yeah.  Besides, you know if I was gonna wander, it’d be right into your bed.”  The slow, dirty smile does the rest of the work for him, and she giggles as she gets up to return to her work.

 

“It’s like a fuckin’ soap opera in here,” Piney gruffs, tapping his glass with a signifying finger.  J.C. dutifully fills it.

 

“Aw, you missin’ _Days of Our Lives_ again, old man?” Bobby asks, tipping a beer up to hide his smirk.

 

“Look who’s callin’ who old,” is Piney’s weak comeback.  He throws back the shot to mask his own smile.

 

Content that he’s put his house in order for the time being, Jax sips his beer and thinks about Dean, indulging for a minute in his favorite daydream, which involves a naked Dean and something anatomically improbable, given the width of a Harley seat.  He puts the image away when he hears the outside door open, figuring it’s bringing business with it.

  
Sure enough, Ope glowers his way over to the table.

  
“You piss Poke Henry off?”

 

Jax looks up, the curl of his lip answer enough.

 

“Jesus, Jax,” Ope sighs out, sitting heavily in the seat vacated by J.C. only minutes before.  “He went to Hale sayin’ you’re gouging him on the price of truck repairs and tellin’ anyone else who’ll listen about how you own this town and how it’s goin’ to shit because a you.”

 

Jax’s first impulse is to track Poke Henry down and kill him.  He puts the feeling away to savor later, when Henry’s least expecting it and they’re alone.

 

Instead, he follows his second inclination, which is to laugh.  “No one’s going to trust the word of Poke Henry, and even if they did, who cares?  People don’t like the way we’re runnin’ this town, they’re welcome to hit the road.”

 

“That’s not the answer,” Bobby offers from the bar.  Jax cuts him a look.

 

Bobby shrugs and swivels on his stool to face Jax.  “You can’t run this town like Charming’s the only answer, even if it is.  People think you’re lordin’ it, they’re gonna get restless.”

 

“People in Charming know me better than that,” Jax observes.

 

“Maybe,” Ope says.  “But a third of the people in Charming aren’t _from_ here anymore.  They don’t know if you’re a good guy or not.  Get the right blowhard on it, and the next thing you know, there’ll be a faction in town that doesn’t want the Sons runnin’ things anymore.”

 

“So what do we do?”  Jax asks like he doesn’t already have a solution in mind.  He does.  Two, actually.  The first involves Poke Henry experiencing a tragic accident when he rides back-up on that supply run.

 

The second, though less satisfying, is probably the better option.

 

Still, he waits out the club.

 

“Can’t kill ‘im,” Piney says without bothering to actually turn around.

 

Jax nods.

 

“Call him out, make him bring his beef up in front of the town council or something.”

 

Ope’s idea is closer to Jax’s own.

  
“Bobby?”

 

The councilor is quiet, with that squinch-eyed, considering look he gets when he’s thinking deep thoughts.  “We need a tribunal that decides stuff like this.  Something besides the town council.  Since everyone on the council is Charming born and raised, they might be considered biased.”

 

Jax nods, says, “Yeah, so we get together a group of people representative of the new face of Charming.  Maybe one of Blue’s guys, maybe Joan.  A coupla our folks.  A fifth that both parts agree on.  They decide disputes instead of the town council.  Business there takes too long as it is, and we never get to the important shit we need to do to keep this place running.”

 

“Who’s going to bring this up to the council?” Ope asks.

 

“It should come from outside of us,” Bobby says.

 

“Tara?”

 

That’s J.C.’s suggestion, and every eye in the place turns to look at her until she mumbles, “Sorry,” and starts wiping down the already gleaming bar.

 

“No, that’s a good idea, J.C.  Tara’s one of us, but she’s been gone a long time.  She might work.” 

 

J.C. gives Jax a beaming, grateful smile.

 

“We can work out the details later. This can wait until the crew gets back from scouting Eugene.”

 

“We might have bigger problems than settling pissing contests then,” Bobby concurs, resuming his usual posture on the stool.

 

Piney snorts as if to say, _What else is new?_

 

Jax is suddenly really tired, realizes he hasn’t gotten much sleep since Dean left.  Maybe only pussies need naps, but he’s thinking about how it might not be a bad idea when Sack and Chibs burst through the outer door, voices loud with arguing.

 

“’m tellin’ you it’s the head gasket.”

 

“And I’m sayin’ it can’t be,” Sack urges, voice high with frustration.

 

“Problem?” Jax drawls, wishing for the third time that day that he could just get on his bike and ride rather than put up with all this petty bullshit.

 

“I got it,” Ope says, getting up.

 

“I can handle it,” Jax asserts, but he doesn’t say it like he means it, and Ope gives him a knowing grin before waving him off.  “You look like shit, man.  Dean wearing you out?”

 

Jax’s responding grin is filthy, and Sack breaks out in that huffing giggle of his that gets Chibs smiling against his will.

 

“Cage match in the parking lot,” Ope orders, jerking a thumb in the direction of the exterior door.  “Now.”

 

What’s left of his beer warm, Jax gets to his feet with an audible cracking of joints and says, “I’ll be in my room,” to no one in particular.

  
“Okay, Jax,” J.C. answers dutifully, and Jax gives her a smile for her trouble.  She really is a great girl.

 

Their room seems empty without Dean in it.  Jax’s eyes scan the space where his duffle usually sits, the peg on the wall for his jacket.  It’s stupid to feel a hollow throb in his chest like this, to worry about Dean.  Dean’s the most capable person he knows.

 

Shaking off the sense that something’s hanging over his head, Jax kicks off his sneakers and flops down on the bed.  He has a second to think how good it feels to be prone before sleep overtakes him and he’s gone.

 

His mother is shaking him, saying, “Baby, you gotta wake up.  Wake up, Jax,” when his eyes open and he focuses on a spectacular pair of tits hovering in his near view.

 

Alarmed by the association, Jax pushes himself upright and swings his legs over the edge of the bed and finds himself looking at J.C.

 

“Baby?” He says, still half asleep.

  
J.C. giggles, says, “Lunch is on.  It’s after two,” answering his next question before he asks it.

 

He’s rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he comes into the common room to find the guys spread out and already chowing down. 

 

J.C. waves him to a seat at the table with Chibs and Sack, who seem to have resolved their differences.  The sandwiches are fresh, the conversation its usual mix of shit-slinging and dirty jokes.

 

Business as usual.

 

Hoping it stays that way until Dean gets back, Jax finishes his food and heads outside for his bike, hoping to make it out of the yard before anything else comes up.

 

He practically knocks Sam over on his way out the door.

 

“Woah, easy,” he says, making a grab for the kid’s shoulder to keep him from falling backwards.

 

“Hey, Jax,” Sam says, somewhat out of breath and a little wide-eyed.

  
“Do Alex and Sally know you’re here?”

 

The guilty look is there and gone in a flash, but Jax was the past master of lying to his mother, so he sees it.

 

“Sam, you can’t keep sneakin’ out like this.  It worries them.”

 

“I know.  It’s just…that place is _lame_.”

 

“Lame, huh?”

 

“Yeah.  All they want me to do is learn and shit.  And watch my mouth.  And help with chores.  I mean, I don’t mind about helpin’ out.  Sally and Alex are pretty okay.  But man, I don’t want to be hittin’ the books twenty-four/seven, you know?  There’s better things to do with my time.”

 

“Like what?”  Jax starts walking as he asks, the kid falling in beside him.

 

“Like helping out you guys around here.  Working on bein’ a Prospect, like you said.  Maybe…learnin’ to ride a bike or something.”

 

Jax laughs.  “Who says you’re going to learn to ride?  You gotta earn your way up to that privilege, man.”

 

“Okay.  Well, what can I do, then?  There’s got to be something you need me for.  I’m a fast runner, and I can hit a can at fifty feet with a stone.  I can track, too.  My brother, Dennis, taught me.  Maybe you need someone watched?”

 

Jax smiles and puts a hand on Sam’s back.  “Why don’t we take a little ride.  I think I’ve got a proposition for you after all.”

 

“Alright!” Sam crows, racing for Jax’s Harley.

 

You’d think the only place in town is the reservoir the way Jax keeps ending up there.  In this case, though, it’s more the product of wanting clear roads for Sam’s benefit—so he can open her up, maybe show off a little—than because he has any real need to see that their water source is safe.

 

They sit side by side on the dirt bank of the reservoir and take turns throwing stones.  Sam’s got a wicked arm, and Jax tells him so.

  
“My brother taught me,” the kid asserts, winging another one out long and far, rings rippling out around it as it plunks into the water.

 

“So there is a job you could do, but you’ve gotta promise me you’ll be careful, not take it too far.  Not even to impress me.  Prospect’s gotta prove he can follow the rules, number one.  Number two, anything happens to you, I think Dean’ll kill me.”

 

“Man, you’re whipped,” Sam observes, throwing another long shot.

 

“Shut up,” Jax says mildly, shoving the kid with his shoulder so that Sam’s next rock plops flat only a few feet out.

 

Sam rights himself and smirks up at Jax, eyes easy, suddenly looking exactly his age.  He swallows past the sudden misgiving in his gut, reminding himself how shrewd the kid is.

 

“There’s this guy…”

 

An hour later, Jax drops an ice-cream-sticky Sam back off at the Home, though not before hearing ample protests as to why Sam should stay at the clubhouse instead.

 

When he gets back to the yard, the shadows are lengthening, the light of the sun slanting low across the sky to the west.  Jax feels a pang of excitement at the thought that darkness should bring Dean home and then squelches it with the thought of what Dean might be bringing with him.

 

He lets both thoughts go at the warm, rich smell of spicy chili pervading the clubhouse.  Bobby’s at the bar with a steaming bowl in front of him, crock pot lid in his left hand, ladle in his right.

  
“Great,” he smiles, snagging a bowl from a stack at the end of the bar.

 

Ope’s already at a table with his father, all eyes angry, so Jax joins Chibs and Sack instead, only half-listening to their friendly debate about carburetors while he tucks in to the chili.  It’s delicious, something about the spices Bobby uses—a close-kept secret he swears he’ll take to the grave—and Jax finds his mind on Dean again, wondering if he can save some for when the latter’s back.

 

He barely suppresses the self-deprecating snort that follows, turning it into a choking noise instead and throwing back a long swallow of cold beer to hide his discomfort.

 

If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was turning into a girl.

 

Still, when he hands his dish over the bar to Rita for washing up, he says, voice pitched as low as he can manage, “You think you could save some of this for later?”

 

Rita gives him a knowing smile and says, “Sure, Jax,” something in her sashay telegraphing her humor as she moves away to answer his request.

 

He can’t seem to find it in himself to mind much, though.  Maybe he is domesticated.  So what?

 

Ope’s raised voice brings Jax’s eyes back to the table, and he takes in the tableau for a second before deciding it’s none of his business.  Piney is shaking his head, spit at the corner of his lips and finger jabbing as he drives home a point.

 

He doesn’t think it’s club business.

 

Hoping it’s the only excitement of the night, Jax heads into the common room, where he’s joined by Chibs and Bobby, who seem to have the same idea of giving the feuding family some space.

 

They shoot the shit in a desultory way until the violent scraping of a chair leads their gazes inevitably to Ope, who’s towering over his father, his own finger going in a genetic echo of Piney’s.  His voice is pitched low and deep, just a warning rumble from where Jax is sitting.

 

“Think I should step in?” He asks, figuring Bobby has a handle on it.

 

“Nah.  Family shit.”

 

Jax nods and takes a long pull of his beer. 

 

“Anything I should know?”

 

“He’s not sure about Rita,” Chibs explains.

 

Jax raises an eyebrow, and Bobby answers it.  “Piney thinks Rita’s not ready for raising a kid.  I think he’s just feeling lonely.”

 

Jax nods.  Seems right.  “Ellie needs a mom, and Rita’s been good to her.  Ope obviously cares about Rita.  And a wedding might be a nice reason to get the town together.”

 

His comment leads to a strange conversation about Jewish versus Catholic wedding ceremonies, and he’s glad enough when Piney grumbles back to the bar and Ope approaches with purpose on his face.

 

Jax sighs, plunks down his empty beer bottle, and gets to his feet.

 

“Patrol?”

 

Ope nods tightly.

 

It isn’t his usual thing—Jax has mostly handed basic duties over to other people, though it took him awhile to learn to delegate—but he likes to keep his hand in, show his face around town, and they all thought tonight would be a good time to make a point.

 

He loves the slow cruise through the streets of Charming.  Charming’s been his town— _theirs_ —for a long time, since the club came here when Jax was just a baby.  It’s the only place he’s ever called home.  And it still is, despite the half-empty neighborhoods, the strange silence and patches of darkness where no generators light up the houses.

 

Marge Curin is out on her front porch, rocking and knitting in the light of a kerosene lamp.  Joe and Jim Erstline are side by side on their stoop, highboy glasses beside them, pitcher on the porch at their backs.  They each raise a hand in a half salute as Jax and Ope slide by, engines loud against the quiet houses.

 

On Main Street, the café is lit up, Steve Petry handling the counter as he does almost every night now, giving Miriam a life of her own.  She’s dating Jenna Calvin, last Jax heard. 

 

Alonso is closing up the thrift store, and he flashes them a smile as they pass.

 

Hale is parked at the corner of Main and Wright, window down, talking to Oliver Evans, who’s on his bicycle.  They wave as they roll past, and both men return the gesture.

 

The outer perimeter takes a half an hour, longer if they drag it out, but Jax knows Ope likes to be home in time to tuck Ellie in, so he makes sure they’re done, waving Ope off at his own street before heading back to the clubhouse alone.

 

He doesn’t go in, preferring to climb the ladder to the roof and sit there for awhile, smoking and thinking, try not to remember in too close detail the last time he was up here, what he and Dean did.

  
He can’t help sparing a glance for the air vent, though, and he smirks at the visible dent made by Dean’s shoulders when Jax shoved him into it.

 

As if thinking of Dean summons him, Jax hears the distinct heavy throb of the Jeep engine, some distance away but closing.  He listens as it idles at the junker bunker, hears its approach with an increasing heartbeat, climbs down the ladder with all the cool of someone who thinks he’s being watched and almost blows the effect by breaking into a huge grin when the Jeep pulls into the yard with Dean riding shotgun.

 

The Jeep is no sooner at a stop than Dean is sliding out of it, stiffly but quick enough.  Jax stops himself from taking the man in his arms, aware of the eyes of Teague and Juice on him and of the door to the clubhouse opening behind.

 

He settles for saying, “You alright?” quiet enough that only Dean hears.  His eyes are busy roaming his lover’s body, taking inventory and admiring the view, both.

  
Dean nods and quirks his lips like he knows what Jax is thinking.

 

Juice comes around the front of the Jeep and Jax lets his eyes look away to take in the young guy, who’s all smiles himself.  The kid slaps Jax on the shoulder as he passes.

 

That leaves only Teague to take up Jax’s attention.  The big man looks like he’s gone several rounds with something ugly, and Jax turns his eyes with some alarm back to Dean, surveying him like he’ll find the answers.

 

When his eyes light on Dean’s hands, bruising obvious in the washed-out glow of the big yard lights, he brings his gaze back up to look more closely at Dean’s face.

 

Not a mark on him.  Maybe a shadow of a lump over one ear.

 

Jax snorts, conveying a lot in the sound, and Dean chuckles, low and knowing, and Teague ducks his head like he can hide his bulk if he slouches and slinks past them both.

 

“You couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, could you?” Jax asks.

 

“Guess he was just too much for my willpower,” Dean answers.

 

Jax can’t resist touching Dean’s back as the other passes him to head into the clubhouse.

 

“I need a beer or three,” Dean notes.

 

“Good to have you home,” Jax answers, which stops Dean just inside the door, face half-shadowed by the dim hallway, visible planes cut to sharp angles by the light that comes in from the door that Jax is holding open with his shoulder.

 

“Good to be home,” Dean answers, looming into full light long enough to suck Jax’s lower lip into his mouth, spit-quick, and then duck back into the darkness, feet carrying him down the hall.

 

The round of welcomes from within drowns out Jax’s shuddering exhale as he closes his eyes for a second to let relief wash over him.

 

There’s work to be done yet that night before he can think about returning Dean’s favor.

  
Jax sighs, pushes away from the closed door, and heads in to do his job. 

 

*****

 

 

 _Despair is no excuse for not doing some good.  It doesn’t matter how bad you feel—someone’s got it worse.  As long as you remember that, you can keep on going._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 13:14-16)

 

Dean’s bone-weary with watching and waiting, willing the miles under their wheels to pass faster.  The idea of sitting in church with the rest of the club for what promises to be an all-nighter makes him groan inwardly, but he doesn’t let it show on his face.

 

He’s greeted with a chorus of warm voices and a bottle of cold beer, compliments of Kerry, who comes out from behind the bar to kiss the conquering heroes and offer them refreshment.

 

Juice falls into a seat next to Chibs and across from Sack, and the three immediately start talking about the Jeep, a perennial topic of conversation.

 

Teague finds a table by himself and takes the beer from Kerry without meeting anyone’s eyes.  Dean sees Bobby looking from Teague to himself, sees the older man raise an eyebrow and then his beer, throwing Dean a toast.  Dean tips his own long-neck toward Bobby before taking a swallow.

 

He feels Jax at his back before he hears the familiar drawl, pitched low for only Dean’s ears.  “I’ve got plans for you later.  Don’t drink too much.”

 

Dean does something obscene with his lips around the bottle’s mouth, and Jax leans in enough for Dean to feel the heat of his groin against the back of his neck.  He wants to lean back, close his eyes, and let go of everything but the sensation, but he knows he can’t.

 

Jax’s next words prove it.  “Church in five.”

 

Juice’s face loses its happy look and Dean feels a corresponding sinking in his belly.  The kid had been pretty quiet on the way back, forcing out the necessary responses when Dean would try to get him talking but otherwise preoccupied.

  
It doesn’t bode well for what’s coming.

 

They file into church, taking their usual places around the big table.  The reaper seems to leer at them, but Dean’s pretty sure it’s just his imagination or exhaustion—or both—at work.

 

Once everyone’s seated, Jax calls them to order.  “Before we get to the deep shit, do you have anything else to report?”

 

Dean answers, “Salvaged some parts from a couple of dozers and Cats.  Might be useful.”

 

“Anything else?” 

 

Jax is looking pointedly at Teague, whose left eye has swollen mostly shut.  He has a nasty cut at the corner of his mouth, red beading where he’s opened it again.  But Teague only shakes his head.

 

“Juice?”

 

The kid gets the preliminaries out of the way pretty fast, about the park outside of Eugene and how he went in.  That’s not the important part anyway, and he glosses over it.  Everyone knows he’s good at surveillance.

“It was hard to tell for sure—the park had a lot of hills, and I couldn’t risk moving around too much.  But in one place, there was a big, open area with picnic shelters and bathrooms and shit, and I counted at least sixty bikes there, maybe another forty trucks and cars.  There had to be a couple of hundred people in the clearing, sitting around makeshift tents, campfires. Some women and kids, but a lot of guys.  I saw Pagan, Outlaw, and Bandido cuts.  They all seemed to be getting along from what I could make out.  I scouted a couple of other places in the park, found more camps just like it.  If I had to guess, I’d say there are at least four, maybe five hundred men, at least a hundred of them one-percenters.  I watched for maybe four hours, and another two dozen people showed up in SUVs and trucks while I watched.  They were welcomed by three guys, one from each of the clubs, and shown to a place to camp.  Seemed organized.”

 

“Hardware?” Ope asks, furious frown creasing his forehead.

 

“Guys guarding the perimeter of the camps had mostly AKs, some M-16s, a few P-90s.  Lot of handguns, knives.  The usual.”

 

“Anything bigger?”

 

Juice shakes his head, face darkening.  “I didn’t want to risk giving away my position to scout snipers’ nests, but they could’ve had some big guns up on the hills or in the trees.  I didn’t see a warehouse or stockpile, though, so I don’t think we’re looking at anything bigger than what we’ve got.”

 

Given that the Sons had been long-time gun runners, their own arsenal was pretty impressive.  Two years after the world began to end, they’d staged a successful raid on a federal evidence lock-up in Sacramento and come away with enough hardware to last them through the apocalypse.  And beyond, as it turned out.

 

There are significant glances exchanged around the table, but no one says anything until Jax speaks.

 

“Did they look like they were on the move?”

 

Juice nods.  “They were packing up their gear, checking their bikes, loading trucks.  Looked like a serious run.”

 

“They’re comin’ here,” Bobby says, no question in his voice.

 

Juice nods.  “That’s what I’d say.”

 

“No way they’re gettin’ past the guard dog,” Chibs notes, but his mouth is turned down at the corners and he’s staring hard at his hands where they rest in loose fists on the table.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Ope argues.  “They lay siege to Charming, they can cut the power lines to the big station, cut us off from supplies, wait us out.  Some of ‘em are bound to get past the lightning.  We’ve never tested it on a group bigger than six before.”

 

“You sayin’ God can’t handle a coupla hundred bikers?”  Bobby sounds offended on behalf of the big guy upstairs.

 

“I’m sayin’ maybe not all of ‘em are strictly evil.”

 

“More of us than there are of them,” Chibs throws in. 

 

“If you count women and kids, yeah.  But a few hundred Scavengers bent on starving us out might be a significant threat.”

 

“What’re they going to eat while they’re waiting for us to starve?” Dean asks.

 

This earns him some surprised looks, though not from Jax, who just gives him a sideways grin that makes him feel a little warm.

 

“Yeah, that’s the problem with sieges in hostile territory,” Sack says.  Sometimes they forget the kid has military experience.  “We have a steadier supply of water and food than they will.  They’ve gotta be countin’ on strength in numbers and maybe finding a way in around the lightning.”

 

“Maybe they don’t believe in it,” Piney suggests, a hint of mockery in it.  He’d been the chief skeptic among them for years.  No sense changing now.

 

“Guess they’ll find out the hard way, then,” Jax answers. 

 

“So how’re we gonna prepare for a siege, assumin’ that’s what they’ve got in mind?” Chibs asks.

 

That leads them into a lengthy discussion sometimes devolving into argument, often heated.  Still, when they emerge three hours later, they’ve hammered out a plan that Dean thinks is pretty good, except maybe for the part where they’re relying on God to put on his holy light show for them.

 

Dean doesn’t really trust God, which is why he leaves the council room and heads straight for the Impala, pulling his weapons duffle out of the trunk where he always keeps it, beneath the locked false bottom. 

 

Jax catches him as he’s heading back inside to lay out his knives and guns and get to work on cleaning them.

 

“It’s four in the morning,” Jax notes.  His face is lined with exhaustion, eyes red around the rims from too much time trapped in a smoky space.

 

Dean shrugs.  “Won’t take long.”

 

“It can wait,” Jax insists, stepping into Dean’s space and putting his hand over Dean’s where it curls around the duffle strap.

 

Dean catches Jax’s eyes.  “You really think we have time for this?”

 

Jax’s lip quirks up in answer, and Dean feels heat bloom low down in his belly.  Still, he tightens his fingers on the duffle and shakes his head.  “I gotta get this done.  There’s a lot of work tomorrow.”

 

“It’s already tomorrow.  You’ve gotta get some sleep.  C’mon.  I’ll help you with this in the morning.  Come to bed.”

 

Dean hesitates, drawn by the throaty, low sound of Jax’s voice, by the insistent heat of his hand where he’s still got it over Dean’s, by the smell of him up close—motor oil, leather, sweat, stale pot, beer breath.  It makes him ache so suddenly that he forgets for a second why he’s still standing out there in the yard, why he’s not already stretched out under Jax’s pinning weight, driving up against him and swearing a blue streak.

The thought must cross his face because Jax makes a sound like a bitten-off growl and leans in to suck Dean’s lower lip and whisper, “I want to fuck you wide open,” against his open mouth.

 

The only answer Dean can manage is a savage kiss, a half-curse caught between their teeth and tongues, wet breath bursting from them as Dean drops the duffle and puts his hands on Jax’s hips to pull him flush against him.

 

“Inside,” Jax says eventually, when they’re in definite danger of rutting themselves to coming right there in the parking lot.

 

Dean retrieves his duffle and follows, achingly aware of his arousal, of the way the damp spot on his boxers rubs against the swollen, sensitive head of his cock.  He’s almost panting by the time they get to their room.

 

Once inside, door kept from slamming only by a force of main will, Jax shoves Dean up against the wall beside the door, and Dean goes with a growl, giving as good as he gets, teeth vicious, tugging on Jax’s lips, tongue driving into him, hips pumping until he’s sure they’ll both have bruises from the force of it all.

  
Jax’s hand is frantic on Dean’s fly, his wrist in the way of Dean’s efforts to get Jax out of his jeans, and when Jax pulls away to give them both space, Dean breathes out a disappointed curse and shoves his pants down, cursing more loudly when he remembers his boots.

  
Jax chuckles, low and filthy, kicking out of his sneakers, and Dean levels him a dangerous look that Jax returns with an insolent smirk. 

 

“Problem?” He says.

  
Dean’s about to explain how it’s a mutual problem when Jax drops to his knees and starts undoing Dean’s laces.

 

He can’t help it.  He wraps his fingers in all that long, blonde hair and grips, which brings Jax’s face up to stare into Dean’s from the region of Dean’s red, dripping cock.

 

Jax roughs out, “You want somethin’?” as Dean increases the pressure of his pull, and Jax barks a sharp laugh before wrapping his lips around Dean’s cock.

 

Dean’s head hits the wall behind him with an audible thump, and he feels the dull throb of pain only distantly over the inferno of wet suction around his shaft. 

 

“Jesus,” he whispers, loosening his grip with one hand to run it down the side of Jax’s face.  He can feel Jax’s jaw muscles working under his hand, and the man is making messy work of the blow job, sloppy noises sending electric arrows to Dean’s core.

  
“Jesus,” he repeats, tugging Jax’s head away.  “Not like this,” he explains, and Jax nods, though his eyes are dazed and his hands shake on the last of Dean’s laces.

 

He manages to get his jacket and shirt off despite the stiffness of sitting all day, despite the inevitable resistance of the ruined flesh of his chest, and Jax uses two hands on Dean’s ass to help himself stand, dragging himself up Dean’s body with deliberation.

The expression on Jax’s face makes Dean groan, a sound that grows louder and longer as Jax wraps a hand around his cock and pumps him roughly before letting go, stepping back, leaving a draft of cold air where he was standing.

 

Dean would be disappointed about that except that Jax has moved to the bed, thrown the covers aside, and climbed up, lying down on his back and spreading his legs wide in obvious invitation. 

 

Dean eases himself onto the bed until his nose is an inch from Jax’s sac and he sucks in the scent of Jax’s body before nuzzling him, earning a “Fuck, Dean,” and a hand scrabbling at his too-short hair.  Dean ignores Jax’s steady imprecations in favor of sucking on the smooth flesh at the join of Jax’s thigh and sac, roughing it with the flat of his tongue before moving to take one of Jax’s balls in his mouth.

 

Jax is writhing above him, heels surging against the sheets to either side of Dean’s hips, and he smiles into his attentions, taking time to suck the other ball likewise.

 

“Dean,” Jax cries, and there’s warning in it.

 

Dean leaves off the wet work to slide further up Jax’s body and feed him his own taste on his tongue.  Jax moans into Dean’s mouth, pulls away to curse, grasps at Dean’s cock.

 

“Lube,” he orders, and Dean complies, wrestling the bottle from the nightstand drawer and soaking Jax’s fingers with it.

 

He struggles to hold himself still while Jax works a finger and then another and then a third into him, to keep from driving his cock against Jax’s hip or thrust back onto the fingers and find some relief.

 

His bad knee is putting up a serious protest at the way he’s crouched there over Jax, but Dean doesn’t care at all when Jax slips his fingers out and says, “Dean,” again, like he’s begging for something.  Instead, he draws himself up, positions himself while Jax steadies him with a slick hand against his hip, and sinks slowly onto Jax’s shaft.

 

Jax’s jaw clamps shut, his head goes back, his neck a straining arch as he breathes through a shout, and then Dean has to close his eyes against the sensation of Jax’s hand on his cock, Jax’s cock hard inside of him.

 

He raises himself, and Jax follows, hips making shallow upward thrusts, desperate.  Dean meets them and drives Jax back down, feeling the way Jax’s cock stretches him, brushes something inside that sets off flares in his belly and builds like ball lightning in the small of his back.

 

Jax strips his cock hard, says, “Dean,” once, like he’s asking for last rites, and then Dean is gritting his teeth against a shout that would wake the whole clubhouse while beneath him Jax clutches the sheets and arches one last time before filling Dean with hot seed.

 

When he’s done shuddering through the after-shock, Dean finds just enough energy to rise up, feeling Jax slip from him in a warm mess, and then fall to one side, pinning one of Jax’s arms, which are spread crucifixion-style on the wrecked bed.

 

Jax surprises him by curling his arm and urging Dean up close against him.  Neither of them are the cuddling sort, and usually, Dean would make a crack about Jax turning into a girl while he was gone, but it feels so good to have the beat of Jax’s slowing heart under his hand, to have the heat of his thigh pressed against Dean’s own, that he can’t find it in him to say a word.

 

Jax surprises him a second time by pressing a wet-mouthed kiss to his forehead.

 

“Dude,” he says this time, unable to let it go.

  
“Shut up,” Jax whispers, a tenderness in his voice that tightens Dean’s breath in his throat.  He almost squirms with the sudden onslaught of feeling, almost makes an excuse to get up from the bed, but as if Jax can feel Dean’s discomfort, he only tightens his one-armed grip and ghosts a breath of a word across Dean’s cheek.

 

Dean closes his eyes against it and lets himself relax, wills sleep to come, which it must, because when he’s again aware of the world around him, it’s gotten a whole lot louder.

 

That’s because Jax is having an argument with someone in the hallway outside of their room.

 

Dean sits up, grimaces at the flaking come on his stomach, and does a visual survey of the room in search of his duffle.

 

He sees his weapons spread out neatly on the dresser top, the gun oil still open on one corner, a rag draped over a partially-open drawer.

 

His next order of business is finding his boxers and tee-shirt, which takes a little more searching.  About weapons, they’re never sloppy.  Dirty laundry, on the other hand…

 

Once reasonably covered, he opens the door to find Jax in grit-teethed “conversation” with Opie.

 

“We need her,” the big man is saying.

  
“Bullshit.  It’s not safe.  And besides, she’s not trained in field medicine.”

 

“She’s one of only three doctors in town, Jax.  You can’t ask her to sit it out.”

 

“I can and I am.”

 

“And I’m telling you you’re wrong.”

 

Sinking feeling in his stomach, Dean realizes he’s eavesdropping and decides that it’s probably time to make them aware of his presence, so he swings the door wider and fakes a loud yawn.

 

“Hey,” he says, pretending ignorance and offering a smile to the two men.  Jax’s face smoothes into a neutral expression, but Ope doesn’t bother, just jerking his chin in a truncated greeting before leveling his look on Jax once more.

 

“Am I interrupting something?” Dean asks, as if everyone in the clubhouse can’t hear them.

 

“No,” Opie says shortly.

 

Jax shakes his head as if he doesn’t want to lie with actual words.

Dean breathes through the urge to call Jax out on it and shoulders through them to find an empty bathroom, the usual morning challenge in a clubhouse their size that sports only two.

 

Once he’s taken a leak and cleaned the worst of the dried spooge out of his short hairs, Dean comes back to an empty room, gets dressed, checks and stows his weapons, and hunts down a cup of coffee.  This he sips at a table by himself, the bustle of serious business apparent in the sporadic opening and slamming of the exterior door and the various people who pass by with short, “Heys,” when they see him sitting there.

 

He won’t be rushed, though, and knows he has time.  After all, his whole life to this point has been about hitting the road at a moment’s notice.  It’s not like he has all that much to look after.

 

The rest of them, though—they’ve got families to consider, plans to make, weapons to tend. 

 

Jax appears twenty minutes later and slouches into the seat beside him.

  
“About before—“ He starts, but Dean cuts him off with a flat-handed slicing motion and a shake of his head.

  
“None of my business.”

 

“Dean—“

 

“Let’s stick to what’s important, okay?”  He sounds indifferent, pleasant even, a blandness in his voice he’s happy to hear, given how he really feels.  Fact is, he understands that Jax wants to protect Tara, can even see his way to accepting that it has nothing to do with where Jax makes his bed.

 

Still, he figures that Jax wouldn’t have lied by omission if he hadn’t had something to hide, and he wonders—not for the first time that morning—if Jax’s ardor of the night before had something besides passion fueling it.  Something like guilt, maybe.

 

Shaking it off—it doesn’t matter, can’t matter when there’s a war on—Dean says, “Where do you need me?”

 

“Depends on their approach,” Jax answers reluctantly, obviously trying to find an angle into Dean’s head.  Dean doesn’t give him the time.

 

“Head-on, I’m thinkin’ They’ve gotta test the wards first, see if there’s truth to the rumors.  Once that happens, it’s anybody’s guess where they’ll try next.”

 

Charming isn’t a walled town.  The junker bunker makes up its main gate, and years ago the Sons had blocked every other road coming into the town save one in the south reserved for quick exits and southern runs.  That gate is also well-guarded, though not as heavily fortified as the main gate.

 

It’d take a lot for a southbound army to go all the way around Charming and besiege it from the other gate, so they aren’t all that worried about a sneak attack.

 

But they rely on heavenly intervention to prevent evil from entering the town limits on every side, something Dean’s always considered a weakness.  He’s urged time and again the need for better fortifications all the way around.  Until now, no one has listened.

 

Of course, now it’s too late.

 

He keeps the “I told you so” to himself, though, and says, “I can patrol the perimeter, look for invaders trying to come at us from offsides.”

 

“No.”  Jax’s refusal is abrupt, and it wrings a startled look out of Dean, a look that quickly morphs to annoyance.

  
“Why not?”

 

“I want you on the bunker with me.”

 

Dean shakes his head.  “What sense does that make?  I can do as much good on patrol as I can standing there looking pretty beside you.  There’ll be others who can do that job for me.”

 

Jax’s eyes narrow, and Dean knows he’s given something away, but Jax lets it go in favor of pushing another argument.

 

“I need you to lead the others.”

 

“Bullshit,” Dean says, and there’s some derision in it.  “There’s gotta be fifteen guys between the Sons and Hale’s people who are better at that than I’d be.  I’m a loner, remember?  Most I ever hunted with was four, maybe five.  Not exactly an army.  Try again.”

 

Dean pins Jax with his eyes and waits, making it clear that Jax has a choice here:  Come clean or go away.

 

Jax’s shoulders slump a second before he sighs out, “Fine.  Look, I just want to know where you are, okay?  I can’t—.  I won’t be focused if I can’t keep an eye on you.”

 

Dean could take that the wrong way, but he knows what Jax means, and despite the unfinished business between them regarding Tara, he can’t let Jax suffer.

 

“Yeah, alright,” he concedes gracelessly.  “But don’t think you’re gonna order me around like a prospect.  I see a need, I’m filling it.  Got it?”

 

Jax smirks, but the relief in it is obvious.  “Could I stop you?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Okay, then.  You want to check out the set-up at the bunker?”

 

Dean pushes his cup away and gets to his feet.  “Let me get my guns.”

 

Jax laughs.  “You’re already wearing three.”

 

“Four,” Dean corrects, not breaking his stride toward the room and his weapons duffle.  On an ordinary day, he feels under-dressed without it.  No way he’s heading to the front and leaving it behind, never mind that the enemy won’t arrive for at least a day or so.

 

 

They’re on their way out to the Impala when Sam skids to a stop on a bike that probably isn’t his, judging from the fact that it’s a hot pink girl’s ten-speed.

 

Dean’s about to say something when Sam blows by him with a quick smile and a “Hey” and heads right for Jax.  Jax shoots Dean a shrug and moves off with Sam’s hand tugging at the edge of his cut.

 

Dean watches the conversation, short and agitated on one side, bemused and smirking on the other, and wonders exactly how the fuck much he could have missed in the two days he was gone.

 

Jax slaps Sam a low one and then slips him a bill, and Sam breezes past Dean with another smile and a nod and is off on the bike once more.

 

“You go into the drug trade while I was gone?” Dean jokes, hiding the discomfort he feels at being obviously outside of the loop on this.

 

Jax shakes his head.  “Nah, kid’s just doing some scut work for me is all.  No big deal.”

 

Dean stares hard at Jax, but Jax’s gaze doesn’t waver.  He keeps the hide-it-all smile right there, and Dean feels like he’s been lied to again.  He might’ve called Jax on it, too, except they hear the tell-tale pop-pop-pop of gunfire from the direction of the bunker and then lies are the last thing on Dean’s mind as they speed off, leaving a stream of rubber and gravel behind him that he’d usually bitch about.

 

At the bunker, they find Blue standing in the M-50 nest, shifting the gun side to side like he’s trying to track something small and swift.

 

The Impala’s barely stopped before Jax is out, gun in hand, keeping low and heading for the near side of the bunker.  Dean follows more slowly, hampered by his knee, eyes taking everything in.  There’s no immediately obvious danger.

 

The guy on the other gun—Marty Martinsen, Dean thinks—nods down to them and shakes his head to indicate that they should stay where they are, it’s all under control.  From the casual way he’s leaning on his own gun, Dean guesses he’s probably right.

 

Seconds later, Blue shouts, “Clear,” and three others of Hale’s people—two men and a woman, Aggie Gireau—appear from the other side of the bunker.

 

Aggie spits into the dirt and says, “Infected,” and keeps walking, loosing a spent round from the chamber and scooping it out of the dirt in an easy, practiced motion.

 

“Three of ‘em,” Blue calls down. 

 

“Infected?” Jax echoes, mystified.  Dean answers his confusion with a grim look.  They haven’t had infected around Charming in months, never mind that they rarely wander in the daylight, given their sensitivity to the sun.

 

“Could be a test,” Dean offers, flipping through his mental catalogue of things he knows about the infected undead.  Things have changed since the end of the end, though, most of the infected having died en masse when the devil went down for the count.

 

The undead who survived were mutants, more vicious, faster, and uglier than the garden variety viral hordes.

 

“You think they herded them in this direction?”

 

“Could be.  Testing our defenses.”  He has a thought.  “Blue—you got eyes further out?”

 

Blue nods over the edge of the nest, spits a stream of brown juice in the dust three feet to Dean’s left, and mutters something into a walkie.

 

A burst of static and several garbled responses later, Blue calls down, “Couple of flashes up in the hills to the east.”

 

“Son of a bitch!” Jax says, keeping his voice low.  “They’re watching us.”

 

“Doesn’t change anything,” Dean answers, squinting up at the big gun.  “All they’ve seen is that the main gate is well-guarded.  They knew that already.  Doesn’t tell ‘em what else you’ve got.”

 

Jax nods, but his mouth is still tight with anger and worry.

 

“Nothin’ we can do about it now,” Dean says mildly.  In the grand scheme of all things fubared, this is a simple hiccup, nothing more.

 

“Yeah, alright.”

 

They spend the next twenty minutes going over things with Hale, who’d showed up minutes after the skirmish with apologies for being on the other side of town checking the rear gate.

 

“We’re good?” Jax asks finally.  Hale nods in the way all cops seem to have, iron-jawed and without humor. “Yep.”

 

“Six o’clock,” Jax reiterates, naming the time for Hale’s people to arrive at the clubhouse for final briefings and marching orders.

 

“We’ll be there,” the sheriff promises, climbing back into his Jeep.

 

After that, there’s the Home and the Hostel to visit, checking on their defenses, on who’s going to be there to fight off invaders should some break through the lines.

 

Alex has the Home well in hand, Sally the children under drill, every one of them prepared to fight or flee, depending on orders.  The smallest are wide-eyed, trusting despite the circumstances of their birth and the world they were born into.  Orphans every one, they nevertheless act like family, and it squeezes something tight and painful in Dean’s chest to see them hanging on Sally’s every word.

 

He’s distracted from his sadness by Sam, who races into the room as if just returned from some secret mission—not an unlikelihood, given Jax’s wink at the kid.  Sam returns the wink to Jax and then jerks his head at Dean like he wants to see him in private.

 

Amused and curious, Dean lets the kid lead him through the kitchen and out into the backyard that slopes up to a brick barbecue pit and patio in the far back.

They drop side by side into metal lawn chairs there, and Dean says, “What’s up?”

 

“I’m not crazy,” is the kid’s unpromising preamble.

 

“O-kay,” Dean answers, drawing out the first syllable.

 

“I see things sometimes.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, like he’s waiting for more.

  
But Sam gives him a look like Dean might be screwing with him, and Dean holds up his hands in conciliation. 

 

“I didn’t treat you like a nutjob the last time you brought this up,” he observes, and the kid seems to relax at Dean’s reminder.

 

“Okay, so.”  And then he pauses, like he’s trying to figure out how to say what he’s seen.  “There’s something comin’ with the Scavengers, something worse’n just a bunch of fat-necked bikers.  I can’t explain it, but it’s something.”

 

“Demon?”  Gone is all pretense of casual conversation. 

 

Sam shakes his head with frustration, his long hair settling into a messy halo around his face.  It’s suddenly so familiar that Dean has to look away, focus on a bee working its slow, droning way around a blown rose planted near the fence line a few feet away.

 

“I don’t know.”  Clearly, it bothers the kid.

  
“Did you see a person?”

 

The hesitation is minute, but Dean hears it.  Then the kid says, “Yeah.  It was my brother.  Dennis.”

 

“Were his eyes black or yellow?”

 

“What?  No.”  He says it like maybe it’s Dean who’s lost his marbles.

 

“What, then?  What was different about him that has you so freaked?”

 

“I don’t know!”  And now he’s pissed, which Dean knows is really fear peeking through.  He tries again, more carefully but without gentleness.  The kid doesn’t need coddling as badly as Dean needs answers.

 

“Look, close your eyes.”

 

Sam does so only reluctantly, and it strikes Dean again that this boy doesn’t really trust him.  He appreciates that, admires it, even.

 

“Think of what you saw in your vision.”  He waits a span of breaths.  “Got it?”

 

Sam nods.

 

“Okay.  So what’s Dennis wearing?”

 

“What is this, 1-900-SCREW-ME?”

 

Dean doesn’t let the kid distract him.

 

“What’s he wearing, Sam?”

 

“Jeans, boots, tee-shirt, vest.”

 

“What, like a sweater vest?”

 

Sam cracks his eyes open to roll them at Dean.

 

“Leather vest.  Like Jax wears.”

 

“Is Dennis a biker?”

 

Sam shrugs, closes his eyes again.  “I don’t know.”  But this time, he doesn’t scream it at Dean.

 

“Where is he?”

 

Another shrug, and Sam’s eyes squinch tighter, his mouth twisting up into a moue of concentration.

 

“He’s alone, I think.  But…it feels like someone else is there, watching.  It feels like he’s in a lot of trouble.”

 

“What’s the place like?  Is he outdoors or inside?”

 

“Outdoors.  On a road, maybe?  I don’t know.  There are some trees.  Some hills in the background.  The sky’s blue.  It looks like it could be anywhere.”

 

“Can you tell if this has already happened or is going to happen?”

 

A pause while Sam visibly tries to make it out.

 

At last, though, he opens his eyes and tosses up his hands.  “I don’t know, okay?  That’s all I got.”

 

“Before, you said it was danger coming. What made you think that?”

 

Sam looks down at the grass framed by his holey sneakers and waggles his head in an indication of uncertainty.  When he looks back up at Dean, it’s with worry in his eyes.

 

Dean chucks him on the shoulder.  “You did good.  Don’t worry about it, okay?  We’ll keep an eye out for Dennis.  Maybe he’s coming in ahead of the army or something to help us out.”

 

Dean doesn’t believe it.  Sam’s face, his posture, everything reminds him painfully of his own Sam, and Dean remembers what Sam’s visions always brought them:  danger, sorrow, and suffering.

 

Still, as he eases upright and starts to hobble toward the house again, working out the stiffness in his knee, he props a hand on Sam’s shoulder as if he needs the help and lets the kid lead him back.

 

By the time they’re in the living room again, Sam’s shoulders have straightened and he is, at least on the outside, back to his old, cocky self.

  
Dean knows better, knows the cost such disguises have, but he lets the kid have it anyway, figuring there’s not much he can do about it.  There wasn’t before.  There won’t be this time, either.

 

“What was that about?” Jax asks as they move toward the Impala parked in the Home’s double driveway.

 

“Just something the kid’s worried about.”

 

“Yeah?”  He asks it in that way he has, the way Dean’s heard Jax use a hundred times.  The tone says he’s interested in hearing more but he won’t push.  It says he trusts Dean to decide for himself what’s important to say.

 

It makes Dean feel vaguely guilty, like he’s keeping secrets, until he remembers that if he is, he’s not the only one.  Then he just feels tired.

 

The trip to the Hostel is short and quiet.

 

A skinny kid, eyes pitted deep with ugly memories, greets them at the door.  Jax stumbles on the introduction, but the kid doesn’t seem to mind.  He offers a surprisingly strong grip to Dean and says, “Lou.”

 

“You up for some defense, Lou?” Dean asks, and the kid’s face goes bright with astonishment first and then slowly growing excitement.

 

“Hell, yeah,” he answers, leading them toward the rec room that takes up the front of the complex to the right of the door.

 

There, they find a dozen guys and girls, the youngest among them sixteen, the oldest twenty or twenty-one, all of them looking at plans of the house, several with pencils tapping against the worn wood of the coffee table.

 

“We were just talkin’ about puttin’ a couple of people on the roof with automatics,” Lou explains, and then he defers to a tall blonde girl who Dean thinks might be named Stacy.

 

“I figure we’ve got the advantage of sight from up there, plus there are fire escapes down the back in two places if we need ‘em.  The third floor hall is easy to defend with just a couple of guns.”

 

“Like a cattle chute,” another girl agrees, pointing to the hallway on the schematic someone’s drawn.

 

“Sounds like you’ve got it figured,” Jax says, nodding his approval.  Various expressions lighten to smiles, and Dean has to keep his own smile from showing at the way these kids look at Jax.

 

Next minute, he’s not hiding an eye-roll as a thin wisp of a girl no more than seventeen says, “We could take in the sweetbutts for you, Jax, so you wouldn’t have to cover the clubhouse.”

 

Jax smiles wider.  “That’s a great idea, Darlene, but the girls are needed elsewhere.  Appreciate the offer, though.”

 

She slips back against the couch seat and beams at him, and it’s all Dean can do not to snort.

 

The Hostel obviously under control, they move into the town center, stopping at Miriam’s café, which is the busiest Dean’s ever seen it, people standing between the occupied swivel seats at the lunch counter and packing every booth. 

 

A held-breath silence descends when they enter, all eyes on Jax, who smiles and nods at Miriam, scans the crowd with a confident gaze, and says, “Town meeting at 4:00 in the park.  Spread the word to your neighbors.”

 

“It’s war, then?” Amstel Ryan asks, tipping back from his counter seat to eyeball Jax.

 

“Looks like.  But there’s nothing to worry about.  If everybody keeps their head and does what they’re supposed to, we’ll be fine.”

 

It’s not the most rousing endorsement of success Dean’s ever heard, but it seems to do the trick, conversation starting to a trickle that grows to a steadier stream as they turn to go back outside.

 

“You’re a regular Douglas MacArthur,” Dean jokes, jostling Jax with his shoulder.

  
Jax snorts and says, “Yeah, well.  They don’t need shine.”

 

Dean nods agreement and they stop in at the thrift store to spread the word there, then at Jetts’, where the couple looks grim and worried. 

 

Jenn’s a couple months pregnant, and Dan hovers, eyes hard on both men, like he’s willing them to keep his family safe.

 

Dean swallows around the bitterness at the back of his throat and nods his way out of the place only to run bodily into Chuck, whose red-faced, wheezing gasp suggests the guy’s been running.

 

“I’ve been trying to find you,” Chuck manages, bending over to prop his hands on his knees and blow out a few shaky breaths.

 

“What do you need?” Dean asks, though he’s got a feeling he already knows and isn’t sure he wants the actual answer.

  
Chuck stands up again, darts a nervous glance at Jax, who smirks a little ironically and says, “I’ve gotta see Merle.  Meet me at the car in twenty.”

 

A stronger pang of guilt makes Dean look after Jax, consider calling him back, but Chuck says, “C’mon,” urgently, and pulls Dean toward the closed Town Hall, where he collapses onto the steps in a sweaty heap.

 

“Did you run here?”

 

Chuck nods, taking a big, steadying breath before saying, “I really needed to see you.”  He pauses, as if for dramatic effect, and Dean gives him an impatient glare that transforms Chuck’s smug expression to the kicked-puppy look he perfected sometime when the angels were still making regular appearances.

 

“I had a vision.  Well, sort of.  I mean, I saw _something_.  I’m just not sure what.  There’s something coming.  It’s bad.”

 

Wondering if there could be a Trickster in town, Dean looks around suspiciously before shaking off the feeling of having been through all this before.

 

“Demon?” He says, trying not to shiver through the echo.

 

“No.  Just…bad.  I don’t know what.  But bad.”

 

“Did you see someone?”

 

“Maybe?”  Chuck’s face is a parody of confusion, eyes squinty, lips curled.  He waves his hands helplessly and shakes his head.  “It’s all blurry, man.  It’s not like it used to be, full on Technicolor, surround sound, sens-o-rama, you know?  It’s just…fragments and…impressions.  Sorry.”

 

The last word is said with such genuine defeat in his voice that Dean relents.  It’s not Chuck’s fault the god mojo isn’t working so well anymore.

 

“Hey, it’s no problem.  I think I’ve got a handle on what might be coming.”

 

“There’s something else,” Chuck starts weakly, voice trailing off at the end.  He looks even more uncomfortable than before, which Dean didn’t imagine was possible.

 

“Yeah?”  He might sound pissed, but he doesn’t change his tone.

 

“The kid.  Sam.  He’s—“

 

Dean’s eyes are fixed on Chuck’s face, watching the man go through the various ways he could end that sentence. 

 

At last, defeat stamped on every feature, Chuck mumbles, “He’s, like, your brother.”

 

“What?”  It’s not incredulous so much as dangerous, a low, warning noise that brings Chuck’s head up suddenly, widens his eyes almost comically.

 

“He’s like your brother.  You know, he’s got the same gift as Sam had.  Visions.”  Chuck makes a sort of circling gesture with one open hand around his head, like he’s swatting invisible, orbiting angelic voices.

 

Dean shakes the layer of ice from his chest with a heaving breath and rubs a hand over his face.  He can’t decide whether he’s relieved or disappointed.

 

“I know,” He says at last, breaking Chuck from his frozen posture of anxious focus.

 

“This thing that’s coming has something to do with him.  I think.  I’m not sure.  It’s—“

 

“Not clear.  Yeah, I got it.”  Dean pauses, and then adds, “Don’t worry about it.”

 

Chuck’s eyes fix avidly on Dean’s, face alight with sudden hope.  “You can stop it?”

 

Dean laughs and it’s a bitter sound.  “I wouldn’t go that far.  Maybe I overstated my case.  What I mean is, I think it’s going to be okay.  Hell, we withstood the actual apocalypse.  Whatever this is can’t be so bad.”

 

If Dean believed in jinxes, he’d be kicking himself right now, but given how bad the Winchester luck runs, superstition is merely redundant.  Instead, he works his way upright and rubs his face with a tired hand.

 

“You need a ride back to your place?”  
  


“That’d be great,” Chuck answers, sounding more grateful than the favor warrants.

 

They wait for Jax side by side against the Impala’s grill.  Chuck tries to start a conversation two or three times, but each time Dean shuts him down with one-word replies, until the ex-prophet seems to catch on and lets an uncomfortable silence fall over them both.

 

Chuck actually sighs with relief when he sees Jax coming up the street from the direction of the barber shop, and Dean smiles darkly before pushing away from the car and saying, “Get in.”

 

Jax asks Chuck how things are coming with Chuck’s home repairs, and that conversation lasts them until they’re pulling into Chuck’s driveway. 

 

“You need a ride to the town meeting?” Dean asks as Chuck stumbles out of the back seat.

 

“No, Wendy said she’d take me.”  Chuck nods up the street like Dean must know where Wendy lives.

 

“Makin’ friends, huh?” Dean teases, giving Chuck a dirty smirk.

 

The ex-prophet blushes and stammers, “N-no it’s not like that. She’s nice.  She’s just being nice.”

 

Dean laughs, Jax too, leaning over Dean to say, “Chuck, it’s okay if she likes you,” out the window.  “You don’t need our blessing.”

 

“You ever hear her on the subject of you?” Chuck fires back, like he’s forgotten momentarily who he’s talking to.

 

It’s Jax’s turn to look embarrassed, which makes Dean laugh harder and louder. 

 

“Alright.  See you there.”

 

Dean’s still laughing a little to himself as they head back toward the clubhouse.

  
“Shut up,” Jax mutters.

  
This only renews the volume of Dean’s laughter, naturally.

Soon enough, though, Jax is grinning despite himself, and Dean’s watching him surreptitiously, enjoying the way smiling like that takes years off of Jax’s face.

 

Apparently aware of the scrutiny, Jax is leaning over the seat to kiss Dean even before the Impala is done rocking into park, and he doesn’t break off until the hoots and hollers from the work bays bring them both up breathing hard, sloppy-lipped and grinning like kids.

  
Dean feels a little light-headed and has to adjust himself before climbing out of the car.

 

The feeling subsides considerably when Dean sees Tara standing in the door of the garage office.  Jax is already moving toward her with a soft smile on his face, and the friendly filth of Chibs and Sack dies into awkward attempts to pretend they aren’t seeing it at all.

  
Dean makes a show of grabbing his duffle out of the back of the Impala, putting up the window, closing the door, moving all the while in a nothing-to-see-here saunter that belies the sick feeling boring holes in his stomach.

 

The dark of the clubhouse feels like a cop-out, like he’s hiding from something, but Dean reminds himself that he more or less trusts Jax and that they’ve already had this conversation.  Nevertheless, he can’t help but see the look on Tara’s face, the familiar warmth in Jax’s own expression, the way the two of them obviously have History, capital h.

 

He dumps his duffle on the bed in their room, which still smells faintly of sex.  The bed is a ruin of stained sheets that sends a spike of heat through Dean’s belly, and he closes his eyes against the feeling, hoping his stomach will settle before he heaves up whatever’s left from breakfast.

 

They’ve got a couple hours to kill before the town meeting, and with his weapons already prepped, Dean’s at loose ends.  It’s past time for lunch, but he’s not hungry, and while ordinarily he’d go out and offer Sack and Chibs his help, he hesitates to make it look like he’s trying to eavesdrop on Jax’s business with Tara.

 

Frustrated and feeling a little trapped, Dean dumps the weapons duffle and starts to work the slide of his .45.  He doesn’t realize he’s left the door open until he hears, “I took care of those this morning.  Thought you saw.”

 

Jax’s voice is quiet, almost conciliatory, and Dean brings his eyes up and nods, gathering up the guns and knives and stowing them again, waiting, he’s not sure for what, and trying to find comfort in the familiar smell of gun oil, the feel of leather sheathes and the weight of weapons in his hands.

 

“She came to see if she could help.”  Jax doesn’t say it like he’s defending himself, but Dean can only nod, not sure he trusts that the sick feeling inside won’t come out ugly in his words.

 

“You gonna shut me out?”

 

Dean knows his eyes are hot with unspoken things, knows it from Jax’s face, which grows blank, a sure sign that he’s hiding his feelings, and from the strange sense of disconnect that comes sometimes when he’s trying to distance himself from his feelings so he can get on top of them, put them away.

 

“You were talkin’ to Ope about her this morning.”

 

Jax blows out a breath and nods, closes the door behind him as he comes all the way into their room.

 

“I’m not gonna stop caring about her just ‘cause she’s not my girl anymore, Dean.  I’ve known Tara my whole life, practically.”

 

Dean wants to say he knows that, wants to say he understands—because he does, fuck it all, he _does_ understand.  But a part of him—maybe the bigger part—is sure this relationship’s a train wreck waiting for one bad rail, and he’s thinking he should jump before it gets to that.

 

Except he can’t.  The stained sheets, the smell of them both hanging between them on the heavy air, all of it—Jax’s tense jawline, his uncombed hair, the well-tended weapons Dean’s holding in almost senseless fingers.  It’s all he’s got. 

 

It’s _everything_ he’s got.

 

“Fuck,” he says, and Jax snorts in agreement.

 

“Fuck,” he repeats, dropping the duffle on the bed and turning to look at Jax full-on, letting him see what Dean’s feeling, all of it, the fear, the damage, the sadness that stays with him always, the sense that he doesn’t deserve what he’s got left, doesn’t have anything himself to give.  The love.

 

Jax closes the space between them and brings his hands up to bracket Dean’s shoulders, bracing him, waiting for Dean to meet his eyes.

 

“Tara’s the past, Dean, and you of all people should know we carry that with us forever.  But she’s not this and she’s not now.  We are.  You and me, this place, this time.  I can’t say shit about tomorrow, but I know that right now we’ve got this, for what it’s worth.  And I happen to think it’s worth a hell of a lot.”

 

Dean nods, this time too short of breath to say a word, nods and drops his head to rest against Jax’s collarbone.  Jax slides his hands around Dean’s shoulders, pulls him in tight, nudges his cheek until Dean turns into a kiss that is more tenderness than passion, somehow chaste despite the tongue searing its way between his teeth.

 

“Okay?” Jax says, voice breaking on it with hard breath when Dean finally pulls away.

 

“Yeah,” he answers, his own voice not up to the challenge of much talk.

 

“I’m gonna tell Ope to hold my calls,” Jax says.  “And then I’m lockin’ the door.”

 

Dean shares a wolfish smile with his lover before sobering enough to consider.  “You think now’s the time?”

 

“Now’s what we’ve got,” Jax reminds Dean, cupping Dean’s cheek in one casual hand before turning to leave.

 

“We got any clean sheets?” Dean throws at Jax’s back.  Jax laughs and flips him the bird before disappearing down the hall.

 

Though their time is limited, they spend it in slow loving of a kind they don’t usually indulge, breath to breath, face to face, hands moving in lazy stroking motions, and the entering in takes them both by surprise.

 

Dean holds his breath against the look on Jax’s face, can’t seem to look away though his lover wears an expression almost too intimate even for Dean, even for this act.

 

Jax whispers, “God,” against Dean’s cheek as he dips in for a kiss, at the same time that he slides in full and stops, Dean’s thighs shaking around him, his throat tight with unsaid words, eyes hot with unshed tears.

 

“I love you,” Jax roughs into Dean’s collarbone as he pulls back, slow, slow, a kind of tease that leaves Dean panting, begging words broken by curses, until Jax eases his hips ahead again and touches that sweet, deep spot.

 

It’s like that forever, or that’s how it feels to Dean, who’s sweating and spread wide apart, weight of Jax holding him down when he thinks he might otherwise fall away into nothing at the way Jax says his name in a litany of need.

 

Finally, though, the heat and weight of it builds in his belly and he can feel the pleasure purling up from his toes, feel it gathering his voice at the back of his throat, feel it pushing up and out, and he needs, he needs, and he says, “Jax,” and Jax doesn’t hesitate, only shifts his weight to one hand and with the other pumps Dean once, twice, and then Dean’s shouting, hips juddering up into Jax’s pinning weight, Jax’s hand losing rhythm at last as he spills himself, searing and complete, inside of Dean.

 

Usually, they break apart, find some reason to go about their day without acting like they had made love, but this time, Jax holds himself there on shaking arms, stares down into Dean’s sweaty face, lowers his head until they’re sharing breath, and says, “I love you,” again, just in case Dean didn’t hear it before.

 

Spunk cooling on his belly, air pungent with the odor of their mutual pleasure, Jax’s softening shaft slipping slowly from Dean’s body, he can’t say anything except the same words, broken and rough but clear enough from the way a smile breaks out across Jax’s face and the way he lowers his lips again to snatch a single, playful kiss.

 

They’re still like that, untangling reluctantly, when there’s a knock at the door.

 

“Out in a minute,” Jax calls, sighing.  Dean sits up, wipes the mess off his belly with the corner tail of the sheet, and smirks. 

 

“Don’t say it,” Jax grumps, slipping into his jeans commando, which, predictably, makes Dean leer.

 

Dean says it anyway, “It’s good to be king,” mocking evident in his voice and in his look as Jax sniffs the tee shirt he’d shucked earlier, decides against it, discards it, and searches for another, slightly fresher version of the same “Sons” design.

 

Once he’s back in his cut, it’s like he’s put on the mantel of state.  The light of love leaves his eyes, banked down to the way he always regards Dean in public, a possessive yet somehow neutral expression that keeps them from being the target of all kinds of comments.

 

“I’ll see you out there?” Jax asks, indicating the clubhouse with a jerk of his chin.

“Right behind you,” Dean answers automatically, not really thinking.

 

“That’s the other way around,” Jax says, door halfway open, face turned back over his shoulder to deliver the line.

 

“Ha-ha,” Dean deadpans, but he’s smiling as he levers himself out of bed and starts a similar search for something clean enough to wear.

 

There’s a nervous hum of tension in the clubhouse that everyone’s trying to dispel by being lewd and loud, so that when Dean comes in a couple of minutes after Jax, the crowd breaks out into cat-calls and applause.  He knows they’re trying to blow off steam, and he smiles and waves like he’s on parade for winning the gold in freestyle fucking.

 

“You’re all just jealous,” he shouts, taking a beer from a beaming J.C.

 

To anatomically improbable suggestions, Dean shotguns the beer, catching Jax on his periphery with a wicked smirk on his face.  He almost chokes on the last of the foam when Jax makes a very specific gesture in the region of his crotch and then winks at Teague, who’s been sulking since they got back.

 

The big man glowers and grimaces into his empty shotglass.

 

As a show of force, the assembled club is impressive, engines making windowpanes rattle as they do a slow cruise down the main drag, Dean in the Impala bringing up the rear.  He’d argued that he wasn’t ready to drive her, but Jax had ignored him, dangling the keys like bait.  Since they weren’t going very far or very fast, Dean let himself be persuaded, and truth was, it didn’t take much.

  
Fuck, but it felt good to be back behind the wheel of his baby.

 

The people of Charming were already assembled around the gazebo at the center of the town park, and Dean let out a low whistle to see so many.  In the post end-times, he forgot what crowds felt like, and though Charming wasn’t more than a thousand strong, including kids, it was still something to see so many gathered all in one place.

 

Of course, they had concerts here now and then, “morale-boosters” Hale called them, but since Charming’s population boasted four professional flutists but not a single goddamn drummer, Dean wasn’t much interested and always managed to have something else to do on those nights when the Sons sent a contingent to spread good will.

 

What’s more impressive than the number of people, though, is the hush that falls over all of them when the club parks and climbs off their bikes.  They make way for Jax, trailed by the rest of the club, sweetbutts last, setting up chairs and blankets in an area left clear for them, and when he mounts the steps to the gazebo, Ope to his right, Dean on his left, faces turn expressions of mingled hope and fear on them.

 

Dean swallows down a sudden spike of anxiety, uncomfortable with the scrutiny and downright uneasy about the trust.  Still, he reminds himself he’s saved this town—and the whole freakin’ world—before and squares his shoulders, eyes indifferent, scanning the crowd for trouble spots.

 

Not that anyone’s going to be that dumb.

 

Jax takes almost a full minute to look over the crowd himself, nodding here and there at familiar faces.  Then he clears his throat and begins.

  
Even without a microphone, his strong voice carries.

 

“I’m not here to tell you there’s no reason to be scared.  There’s plenty of reasons, a few hundred of ‘em, Charming-bound.  They could be here by morning.  I’m not gonna say they aren’t a threat, either.  Just ‘cause the big guy keeps this town clear of evil doesn’t mean there aren’t ways we haven’t thought of yet for evil to get in.  And they want what we’ve got.  Who wouldn’t?”

 

A murmur passes over the crowd like the breeze in the wake of a harbinger crow.

 

Jax waits until it’s still again.

 

“What I’m here to remind you, though, is that we’re good people, every one of us.  The big guy makes sure of it, but besides that, you can see it every day, from the way we help each other out, the way we make our neighborhoods better, the way we’ve made a family out of all kinds of different people.

 

And I believe, always have, that good people win over bad ones every time.”

 

Another murmur, raised voices at the eastern edge of the assembly.  Dean thinks he can see Poke Henry back there and a few of the newer guys, milling around and making angry gestures.  He sees a couple of Hale’s people flanking the crowd on their way to the disruption.

 

Jax doesn’t raise his voice, though, and the crowd settles once more to hear him.

 

“You don’t believe me, you’re either new around here or you have a pretty damned short memory.”

 

Dean has to hold his breath to keep from squirming under the focused attention Jax’s words bring.  It feels like everyone there is staring only at him.

 

“Point is, as long as we remember who we are, the people of Charming are going to do just fine.  Everyone has a job to do, whether that’s staying inside and keeping quiet or manning hoses in case of firebombs or bringing water to the defenders or lighting candles and praying.  Every job matters.  We’ve been prepared for something like this for a long time, and we’re ready.  As long as you all keep your heads, stick together, and do what you’ve drilled, we’re going to come through just fine.”

 

Instead of taking questions, which had the potential of leading to raised voices and unhelpful tangents, they’d arranged something else.

 

“I’ve got work of my own to do, so I’m going to step down and get to it, but Sheriff Hale and his people are stationed around the park to answer questions and take care of your concerns.  If you need anything at all, you just have to see one of them.  And if it’s real important and you feel like you need to, you can come to the clubhouse before six to see me personally.”

 

Ope shoulders ahead of Jax, Dean falling in beside him, the others making a loose wedge around him to get him out of the park.

 

A few questions are shouted anonymously, but Jax keeps walking, pleasantly neutral expression on his face, pace regular and unhurried.

They make it back to the bikes without incident, and soon enough the parade is heading back to the clubhouse slightly quicker than they’d come.

 

“Well?” Jax asks, meeting Dean in front of the Impala and falling in next to him as they move toward the clubhouse.

  
“Thought it went about as well as could be expected.”

 

“You see Poke Henry and his people?”

 

Dean nods, jaw tensing.  “Yeah.  Son of a bitch is going to be trouble.”

 

“We’ll worry about it later,” Jax says, lips pressed in a grim line.

 

“Just make sure he’s nowhere near you when the fighting starts.” 

 

Jax’s expression says he’s already thought of that himself, and Dean feels a little fear easing away from his heart.

 

They’re almost to the door when Sam races up on his “borrowed” pink bike and skids to a stop inches from Jax.

 

“Gotta talk to you,” the kid says, eyes fixed on Jax.

 

“I’ve got to talk to you, too,” Dean answers, as if Sam was talking to him.

 

Sam’s eyes go uncertainly from one man to the other until Jax says, “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.  Got somethin’ I need to do inside,” settling it for the time being.

 

Dean leads the way back to the Impala and leans there, Sam jumping up beside him but mindful of the chrome.

 

“What’s up?” Sam asks, knee jiggling, eyes skittering away from Dean toward the door that Jax disappeared through.

 

“I need you to promise that when the shit hits the fan, you’re gonna stay at the Home and help Alex and Sally with the kids there.”

 

“I ain’t no babysitter!” Sam cries, leaping off the hood like it’s suddenly gotten hot.

 

“You’re a hell of a lot smarter than most of those kids and know how to take care of yourself.  I need you there in case the Scavengers breach the walls.”

 

“No way,” Sam says, jut of his chin stubborn.  “I’m gonna be at the wall with you ‘n’ Jax.”

 

“That’s not going to happen,” Dean says, standing up and pinning the kid down with a look.  “I don’t need to be worried about you while we’re in the middle of it.  You’re stayin’ at the Home.”

 

“Bullshit,” Sam says, fixing furious eyes on Dean.  “You aren’t family.  You can’t tell me what to do!”

 

“Maybe not.  But I’m a Son, and I can order Alex to lock you up if I have to to keep you safe.  Or you can act like a responsible kid and do what I’m askin’ to help out at the Home. It’s up to you, Sam.  How you wanna play it?”

 

The glare Sam levels at Dean is familiar enough to give him a frisson of unease.  He’s seen it before a hundred times, though usually it had been aimed at his dad. 

 

“Fine,” Sam growls, graceless in concession.  He kicks at the loose gravel of the lot and says, “Are we done?” even as he’s walking toward the clubhouse door.

 

“Sam!”

 

But the kid doesn’t turn around.  Dean gets it, he does.  Sam wants to help, wants to feel like he’s doing something that matters.  But Dean meant what he said.  He can’t be worried about the kid in the middle of a fire fight.

 

Still, he probably could’ve handled that better.  Sighing, Dean moves toward the clubhouse himself, wondering if there’s something he can say or do to smooth things over.  When he gets to the common room, though, there’s no sign of Sam and Jax, and a quick inspection of their room and the office turns up a whole lot of nothing.

 

J.C. sees Dean’s search and nods down the hall toward the shrine at the back.  “I think they went out the back way.”

 

He offers a terse, “Thanks,” and heads that way, only to find Jax, sans kid, leaning against the wall beside the rear door, smoking.

 

“That was fast,” Dean remarks, innocent enough but obviously fishing, hoping Jax will tell him what the hell he’s got going with the kid.

 

Jax doesn’t bite.  “He had to get back to the Home.  Alex needs him for something.  Kid’s pissed at you.”

 

Dean shrugs, declines a drag of Jax’s cigarette.  Dean’s never gotten the taste for tobacco.  “He doesn’t belong at the bunker.”

 

“Agreed,” Jax says, nodding through a stream of smoke.

 

They’re silent for a few more drags, until Jax drops the butt and grinds it out with the heel of his sneaker.

 

“You want to help me with inventory at the arsenal?”

 

Dean grins.  “Flamethrowers and rocket launchers?  Wouldn’t miss it!”

 

Jax returns Dean’s enthusiasm tenfold and they head around the clubhouse to get the Impala.  The arsenal’s on the other side of town in a nondescript metal building that used to house Innovent Technologies, if the fading sign on the overgrown front lawn is to be believed.

 

They spend a happy hour and a half there helping Hale’s men load their vehicles, matching ammo to weapons and checking firing pins.

 

There’s a long convoy of heavily armed vehicles to head back to the clubhouse just before 6:00 for the strategy session and orders portion of the long night’s preparation.

 

Hale’s people park their trucks and SUVs along the road and walk in, stopping in the yard and milling in small groups, voices low, already tense with anticipation of what’s coming.  The Sons are making the rounds, back-slapping and high-fiving, while Hale stands near the clubhouse door in a serious conversation with Blue.

 

Dean sees Poke Henry and a couple of guys off by themselves on the fringe of the crowd and wonders if that’s going to be a problem. 

 

The Impala eases through the crowd to take her usual place of honor along the fence at the end of the row of bikes, and Dean can’t help but be gratified by all the admiring looks she earns.  It’s a small thing, but it counts, especially given what they’re up against.

 

 “Lotta people,” Dean remarks, opening his door.

 

“Hope it’s enough,” Jax answers before he lets a good-ol’-boy smile wipe the worry right off his face.

 

Dean follows Jax as he makes a beeline for the Jeep, which Sack or Chibs has parked near the clubhouse door, nose out.  He’s stopped now and again by a glad hand or a big voice, but he makes it there soon enough and climbs up to stand on the Jeep’s hood.

 

The crowd falls more or less silent like a signal has been given.

 

That’s as it should be for a paramilitary force, Dean guesses.  Frankly, all that pseudo-authority planted in one place makes him nervous, never mind which side of the line he currently lives on.

 

Hale’s on the ground beside the Jeep’s front bumper, Blue next to him.  Ope has the other corner of the hood.  Dean leans up against the driver’s side door and keeps his eyes on the people nearest them.  He sees that Chibs, Piney, Bobby, Juice, and Sack have spread out at the perimeter, taking the advantage of height where they can.  They aren’t expecting trouble—these people are their allies and friends—but once an outlaw, always an outlaw, Dean guesses.

 

Jax takes a second to scan the crowd and make a show of it, like he’s considering their amassed strength.  Then he smiles and says, “It’s about time we had a chance to blow shit up.”

 

That’s it.  No preamble, no careful lead-in.  He’s not here to hold hands.  By the raucous roar of the crowd, Jax has hit the perfect note.

 

“I’m not gonna bullshit you.  These Scavengers are some of the worst humanity’s got left.  They’re outlaws with no cause, and all they want is to take what we’ve worked so hard to get—our peace, our homes, our women.  They don’t give a fuck about keepin’ the world alive.  They just want to take what they can and destroy what they can’t.  We give ‘em a foothold, the world really is over.  So pay attention to your team leaders.  Hale and Blue’ll hand out specific assignments.  Trust the people in charge, do what you’re told, keep to your posts no matter what, and we’ll all make it through this.  We can all go home to our families and friends tomorrow night with the blood of our enemies on our faces and the knowledge that we can sleep in peace every night after that.”

 

A second, bigger roar goes up, loud enough that Dean can feel it reverberating through the Jeep’s frame and through the soles of his boots.

 

He sees Jax handing Hale a stack of plans they’d had worked out for months, covering every contingency.  Dean feels good about them, as far as they go.  Of course, it’s always the unplanned-for crap that takes an army apart, but he can’t worry about that.

 

As Hale, Ope, and Blue move through the crowd, singling out team leaders and working on gathering people into squads, Jax answers questions, walks through the gathered army, talks to people.  Everyone seems to have something to say to him, and Dean gets tired just watching Jax’s easy manner, knowing that it’s got to take him some effort to keep up the appearance of ease.

 

Dean’s glad once again that he’s not in charge.

 

“Hey,” he hears, turning to find Sack standing at his elbow.

 

“Hey,” Dean answers, the standard response.

 

“You think we’re in good shape?”

 

Dean’d be surprised by the question, except he knows that Sack isn’t really second-guessing Jax.  It’s just that the kid trusts him, a fact that still mystifies Dean.

 

“Yeah, I think we’re okay, ‘slong as the big guy does his thing and everyone keeps their heads.  You got a reason you’re askin’ me?”

 

Sack shakes his head, but by the nervous way the kid scuffs the ground, Dean knows something else is up.

 

“Sack?”

 

Sack looks him full in the face.  “I’ve been to war, you know.”

 

Dean nods.  They all know the story of how Sack got his nickname.

 

“But this isn’t the same.  I mean, it’s people, yeah, but they aren’t…it’s not just people, right?  There’s somethin’ else?”

 

He leaves the last as a question and looks hopefully at Dean.

  
Dean sighs and lets a tired, bitter smile curl his lip.

 

“’sfar as I know, it’s just people, Sack.  I haven’t heard anything else.”

 

“C’mon.”  And he says it with a little hint of reproach, like they both know Dean’s lying to him.

 

“What do you think you know, Sack?”

 

Sack shrugs, looks uncertainly off at the crowd, and then brings his eyes back to Dean.  “I heard the kid, Sam, sees things.  And that friend of yours that was a prophet, Chuck.  He might’ve heard something, too.”

Dean shakes his head, lips firming into a line.  “Listen to me, Sack.  This is the truth.  As far as I know there’s nothing supernatural comin’ with this army.  It’s just people.  Terrible, awful people.  But just people. Okay?”

 

Sack’s relief is evident in the weak smile that washes over his face and the way his posture relaxes.  “Yeah.  Yeah, okay.  Thanks, Dean.”

 

Dean slaps him on the shoulder, says, “Don’t you have work to do?”  And Sack nods and moves off, smile still apparent at the corners of his mouth.

 

Dean wishes he could be as confident in his own words.  It bothers him that there’s a rumor out there circulating about him and the kid, about Chuck.  He’s seen witch hunts before—hell, he’s been on a few himself.  Except in his case, they were literal and not figurative witches.  He doesn’t like the idea of people seeing Sam or Chuck as a resource to be exploited.

 

Given the bigger issues looming on the near horizon, though, Dean guesses he’ll have to file it away for later worry.

 

Now, he searches again for Jax, sees him making his way toward Dean, one handshake or backslap at a time, and Dean waits. 

 

Jax finally shakes off the last of his well-wishers and swaggers up to Dean with eyes already bleeding away the appearance of confidence and strength.  He’s tired, and Dean can see that in every line of his lover’s face.

 

“Come inside,” Dean urges, resisting the desire to touch Jax’s back or wrist to get him moving.

 

Jax shakes his head, lips pursed, “Can’t.  Gotta stay here in case there are questions.”

  
“Bull.  Ope and Blue can handle it.  You look like shit.”

 

“Bet you say that to all the guys who fucked you into the mattress last night.”

 

“God, would you two quit flirting and get a room a’ready,” Chibs teases, brushing Jax’s shoulder deliberately as he passes.  “Inside, preferably.”

 

“You heard the man,” Dean presses, following his words with a gentle two-handed prodding.

  
Jax goes, hardly dragging his feet, and once they’re in the dark quiet of the long hallway, he seems to lose whatever forward momentum he has.  Dean wraps an arm around Jax’s shoulders and pulls him in.  It’s awkward and painful—Dean’s taking weight on his bad leg—but he doesn’t want to give up the closeness.

 

About the time Dean starts wondering if being butt-fucked can actually turn a person into a girl, Jax straightens from their impromptu embrace, and Dean sees that Tara is sitting alone at one of the round tables near the bar.

 

“You need a minute?” he murmurs, not so much a gracious loser as an awkward winner.  (After all, he _had_ been fucked into the mattress last night.)

 

“Yeah.”

 

Dean nods like that’s perfectly fine, which it more or less is, he’s surprised to discover.  When he gets to their room, sees the bed—the sheets will never recover, he’s pretty sure—sees their things scattered on the dresser top, on the floor and chairs, on every available surface, really, because they’re both slobs, he sees _them_.  Him and Jax.  This is their room, their home.

  
For the first time in a long while, Dean takes a full breath and doesn’t feel a tightening in his chest of jealousy or anger or fear.

 

And then the fear comes as he realizes he’s happy. Actually full-on, legitimately happy.

 

Which means that whatever’s coming, it’s going to be worse than expected.

 

“Shit,” he growls, checking his duffle for the umpteenth time.

 

Jax pushes through the door a minute later, takes in Dean’s nervous habit of handling his weapons, and smiles.  “You worried?”

 

“I’m happy,” he bites out, and Jax seems startled by the response for a second, and then not surprised at all.  In fact, he starts laughing—head back, baying at the moon, gut-clenching laughter.

 

“It’s not funny,” Dean grouses, irrationally hurt and then all at once overcome by how ridiculous it is.  He didn’t think he had it in him to laugh like that, but once he starts—a chuckle growing to a chortle growing to an abs-aching, knee-weakening cackle—he can’t seem to stop.

 

Not even the knock at the door, at first surreptitious and then warning, breaks them up, leaning together at the foot of the bed, shoulder to bouncing shoulder, tears streaming down their faces.

 

This is the sight that greets Ope when he opens the door to say, “Uh…scout to the northeast just reported in.  The army’s made it to Chico.  They’ll be here by nightfall.”

 

Whatever Ope might have expected—and by his grim expression, he was anticipating immediate action—it’s probably not another, even wilder burst of laughter.

 

With a snort of disgust, he closes the door, and they listen through diminishing guffaws to his heavy boot tread storming away.

 

“He doesn’t like me,” Dean observes, and Jax snorts, wiping away laughter tears and resting his damp hand on Dean’s thigh.

 

“I do,” Jax leers, leaning in for a wet, open-mouthed kiss, which Dean returns with enthusiasm.

 

“I can tell,” Dean manages, a little breathily, minutes later.

 

They rise like they’d planned it, move toward the door together, Dean only falling behind Jax when he opens the door.  He pauses there in front of Dean, and Dean has a second to worry that there’s going to be some exchange of sentimental words, which he sucks at, when Jax says, “Don’t die,” in Dean’s nearer ear.  Dean nods, smirks, “You, either,” back at him.  And then they’re at the common room, where the gathered Sons await their leader’s charge.

_*****_

_Winning isn’t only about what you get.  It’s also about what’s lost.  No victory comes without cost, something we forget in the heat of the moment.  Only afterwards, when the damage is already done, do we see how steep a price we paid.  Then we have to ask if it was worth it all along, which is a much harder question to answer and one that’s most often followed by a lie._ (Book of Sons and Brothers 16:21-25)

 

As expected, the enemy waits until the cover of full dark to descend upon Charming.  The darkness doesn’t help the Scavengers in terms of stealth, though.

 

Jax and the others on the Gate hear the bikes coming long before headlights appear, crawling along the road in waving lines like radioactive ants on the march.

 

Chibs, Sack, and Juice keep up a running commentary on what kind of bikes they have, what kind of horsepower they’re talking, and what’s wrong with their engines and exhaust systems.

 

Hale and Blue and the others, men and women in mismatched helmets, cut-off denim jackets over Kevlar vests, cast-off body armor scrabbled from here and there over the years, wait with impassive faces, some smoking, others just staring off, eyes fixed on some indefinite point.

 

None of them fidgets or shifts in place or betrays worry of any apparent kind.

 

Sack, though, is kicking up a minor dust-storm, scuffing one boot repeatedly in the dirt behind the gun tower to the right of the gate. 

 

Juice is plugged in, bobbing his head to whatever music he had had uploaded on his iPod five years before and whatever he’s been able to salvage since from houses and businesses where people shared his love of the belly-thrumming bass that Jax can almost hear over the sound of oncoming mayhem.

 

Piney sips from a flask, smiles at the bite of the whiskey, and whistles tuneless and quiet at the darkness.

 

Teague slouches in the shadows of the bunker, hand smoothing repeatedly over the stock of his sawed-off.  If he’s looking at anyone or anything, Jax can’t tell.

 

Chibs is talking low and earnest to Bobby, who’s nodding his head, his expression abstract.  Probably praying, Jax thinks, wondering fleetingly if he should try it himself.

 

Then he snorts at the drift of his thoughts and looks at Dean, who’s taken up position just behind the left tower.  Dean’s standing like he’s fixed in place, his hands open at his sides as if he’s about to engage in an Old West draw, his eyes, if Jax could see them, probably scoping out the terrain he can see beyond the Gate, in the light of the kliegs mounted there, washing out the no man’s land of barren road and raw dirt that stretches out a hundred yards from the junker bunker.

 

This bunker, unlike the first, they’d built just to the south of the God-spot, as they call it.  In the blazon of the kliegs, the broken concrete where so many have met their maker—literally—looks innocuous, like an untended highway to a forgotten town.

 

So does the mine field, which in the ordinary course of taking in refugees, they’d flagged.  The merry yellow and orange gas rags are gone, though, the earth over the mines as broken and empty as the innocent dirt to either side.

 

The enemy will find out soon enough where death has seeded the soil.

“C’mon,” Jax mutters when the nearest bikes pause a quarter-mile away, engines revving in what might be an intimidating growl to anyone who’s not the Sons of Anarchy, Redwood Originals.

 

Or Hale and his men and women, who seem cut of the same fearless cloth.

 

Or Dean, who’s faced Hell itself and lived to tell.

 

Jax almost feels sorry for the Scavengers.

 

They amass like clots of giant fireflies, so many noisy insects, apparently awaiting the bulk of their numbers to arrive. 

 

A few of Hale’s people shift their stances, but just to a state of readiness, weapons casually slung over a forearm or barrel-down, awaiting a shot.

 

After what seems an awful lot of dramatic posturing for road scum, a contingent of bikers roars forward, sliding to a stop in a spray of gravel maybe twenty feet from the lightning’s usual sandbox.

 

Jax lets a smirk jack up one corner of his mouth and can feel eyes on him now, Sons and others taking in the way he’s going to play this.  It’s supposed to be about parley, he’s guessing.

 

There’s not a chance in hell he’s surrendering a goddamned inch of soil.  God-loved.  Whatever.

 

Dean falls in to Jax’s left, Ope to his right as he walks through the Gate and out onto the road, stopping directly in the center of the sweet spot, waiting to see how dumb these assholes are.

 

Pretty dumb, it seems.

 

A beer-gutted old guy, grey hair in a greasy tangle on his shoulders, dismounts and comes ahead, and two lieutenants, beefy, no-neck types who reek even from that distance, fall in to either side.

 

If they’ve got twenty teeth between them, Jax’d be surprised.

 

As if there’s a magic button buried beneath the powdered concrete, as soon as Beer-Gut steps up, thunder starts to rumble ominously overhead.

 

Jax struggles to keep from laughing at the curious range of emotions that cross the three men’s faces at the sound, which grows from the warning thrum of a distant stampede to a much more urgent abandon-ship sound while he watches.

 

Beer-Gut looks confusedly up at the sky, a glance the other two mimic, open-mouthed and squinty-eyed.

 

Then he looks at each of the other two like they might have some explanation for the noise.

 

As it increases in volume, they start to look nervous and then downright afraid, but it apparently doesn’t occur to any of them that they might be the cause of it, despite that they must have some idea what guards Charming besides the Sons.

 

Dean makes a noise in his throat that might be a swallowed laugh or could be a warning.  Whatever the case, Jax takes a cautionary step backwards just as a bolt lances out of the air and strikes Beer-Gut, joining him to his two companions in a delicate, deadly tracery of blue light before reducing all three to tidy piles of ash.

 

“And that concludes the day’s negotiations,” Dean remarks.  Ope makes a strangled sound that might be laughter despite himself, and Jax grins wide and white-teethed.

 

“Anyone else?” Jax shouts, holding his arms out to his sides in clear provocation.

 

No one moves forward.

  
He laughs then, out loud, a derisive, dismissive sound, and turns his back on the enemy.

 

A lone engine revs, and they hear tires approaching. 

 

Jax takes his time turning around, smirk still plastered on his face, palms out in an insulting way, as if to suggest he doesn’t need a weapon to defeat the army waiting in the darkness beyond the light-washed field.

 

A tall, one-eyed guy, red hair going grey in a greasy rat’s-tail down the back of his Pagans cut, steps up, stops with his boot-toes brushing the broken edge of road where his three companions had just taken their divine retirement.

 

“Not much of a welcome.”

 

“That’s ‘cause you’re not,” Dean observes, and though Jax has his back to his lover, he can hear the expression on Dean’s face.

 

One-Eye doesn’t rise to it, though, only smirks and spits a stream of brown juice onto the remains of one of his men.

 

“Sentimental,” Dean murmurs, and Jax’s smirk widens.

 

“You think we’re gonna let a little light-n-fireworks show stop us from getting into Charming?”

 

Jax shrugs.  “Honestly, I don’t care what you do.  It’s not really up to me.”  And he gives a nod skyward to indicate the big guy.

 

“Notice you ain’t moving forward,” Dean observes.  Jax hears Ope’s cut creak as his VP shifts his weight a little.  Dean’s being an ass, but it’s entertaining.

 

The one eye tracks over to Dean, stops there, considering.  An ugly smile curls up one corner of the guy’s lip.  “You must be the fuck-toy.  I heard a lot about you, pussy. Heard you take it up the ass and scream like a girl for it.”  The statement is followed by a series of obscene kissing sounds that leave very little to the imagination.

 

Dean laughs, and though it isn’t a happy sound, it’s not what Jax expected, either.

 

“You heard I’m a cocksucker but missed the part about me killing the devil?  You have the shittiest spy network in the history of the world.”

 

 “The devil’s a pussy, too.”

 

Dean’s answering laugh is louder, with more bark to it.  “Yeah, well, that’s true enough.  And still he’s tougher ‘n you.”

 

One-Eye shifts like he’s going to take a step, but like he’s suddenly remembered the last bikers to stand in the spot, he stops himself and settles back in place.

 

“Enough talk.  You gonna make room for us in Charming, or are we gonna burn the place to the ground?”

 

Jax looks to Dean and then Ope like he’s actually considering, but mostly he’s reading in their faces the same resolve that must be evident on his own.

 

“Since you put it so nicely, I think we’re gonna go back to the bunker and stand there watching you fry.  And then, when you’re all a pile of greasy ashes, we’ll probably drink a lot of beer and piss on what’s left of you.”

 

He looks back again.  Ope and Dean both smile and nod like they’ve been invited to a kick-ass party.

 

“I’m going to kill you myself,” One-Eye predictably responds. 

 

Jax waves it off and turns away, not pausing when he hears the scuff of boots on broken ground or the telltale rumble from above.

 

The rumble recedes after hasty scrambling sounds, and Jax is wearing a shit-eating grin by the time they make the safety of the bunker.  He doesn’t have to look to know that One-Eye has made a hasty retreat back to his line.

 

“What now?” Ope asks.

  
Jax shrugs.  “We wait.”

 

It doesn’t take long.

  
The first wave of would-be invaders makes a tight vee-formation and hits the broken road before the bunker.  Three of them make it to the minefield, with the expected, explosive results.  The other six are struck where they sit, still astride their bikes, which topple, wheels spinning, when their riders are reduced to dust.

 

One by one, engines sputter and kick off.

 

They make a convenient roadblock for future advances.

 

The next assault takes longer to approach, probably the result of the hard-learned lesson.  They avoid the still-smoldering roadway and take a wide sweep to either side of the pile of bikes.

 

None of them goes wide enough to avoid the mines, however, and after a deafening series of explosions and so many geysers of grey dirt, nothing is left but Harley and human parts, scattered indiscriminately over a good four hundred yards.

 

“That’s gonna bring the coyotes,” Dean observes to no one in particular.  From above them, Jax hears a laugh, and he looks up to see Blue grinning over the side of the tower. 

 

The big man looks a little abashed at being caught smiling on duty and then offers a what-the-hell shrug.  “’yotes are good hunting,” he says, as if that explains everything.

 

Dean snorts.

 

Jax returns his attention to the other—less amusing—floor show.

 

Another phalanx of vehicles comes on slow, this one a mix of bikes and trucks.  Jax eases a little further behind the left tower, crowding Dean, who shifts to parallel Jax so he can still see what’s coming.

 

The walkie on every belt squeals with reverb and then a message, “M-50 mounted in the dually.”  It sounds like Jason in his sniper’s nest out there over the road, within spitting distance of the amassed Scavenger army.

 

Jax picks out the wide-tailed profile of the dual-axle Dodge truck and glances up at Blue, who’s no longer visible from the ground.  He knows the man is hunkered down behind his own M-50, a twin to the one in the right tower.

 

Jax clicks the walkie twice to indicate he’s gotten the message. 

 

Three trucks and three times as many bikes make a rough half-circle, the dually in the center, a couple of big guys on classic HydroGlides guarding the front end with AKs.

 

For awhile, everyone just stares at each other, tension building.  From the Scavenger line, someone coughs, a wet sound.  Up on one of the junkers that make up the bunker wall, someone slaps home a clip.

 

Nothing.

 

Suddenly, the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the big gun shakes the ground under Jax’s feet, and he ducks back behind the tower as clods of earth whizz past him.

  
“They’re hitting the mines!” Dean calls.

 

Overhead, their own gun answers, Blue laying a long line of high caliber rounds into the dually.

 

“Incoming!” Macy warns from her perch in the other M-50 tower.

 

Then the tell-tale rattle-whizz of a big shell has them throwing themselves earthward.

  
Jax covers his head with his arms, clutches his gun in one hand, regrets not wearing a helmet.  Dean is a suggestion of bulk in the dark beside him.

 

The earth jumps under him a half-second before the rolling boom of the impact knocks his eardrums inward, and Jax winces, shouts “Motherfucker” against the concussion, and is up on his knees and then on his feet before the earth settles.

 

“Rocket-launcher,” Macy calls down. 

  
Jax is looking at the impact crater where one of Hale’s Sheriff’s trucks used to be.

 

“Take it out!” He calls, and no one bothers to answer except in percussion that makes the air vibrate as both M-50s do the work of seeking out the RPG launcher.

 

The chest-pounding WHOMPH! of something big igniting is followed by a heart-rending shriek of a human in terrible pain.

 

Dean swears next to him, and Jax catches the hunter’s pale face before his attention is snagged by the improbable sound of

 

“Is that Metallica?” Ope shouts over the sound of someone dying ugly out beyond the mine field.

 

“ _Don’t Tread on Me_ ,” Dean answers, adding, “Fuckers” like he’s accusing them of sacrilege.

 

The fourth wave—if you count the hapless three who died by lightning round early on—is an all-truck review that might have made the average UAW worker weep with joy only a few years before.  Chevys, Fords, Dodges, all in various shades of rust, roll up to the edge of the minefield.  In the open beds, men lean behind the cover of the truck cabs, big-bore guns balanced on bi-pods against the pitted metal.

 

In unison, they spit flames, but the expected explosions don’t come.  Instead, there’s an ominous hissing, as if they’ve launched pissed off vipers at the wall.

 

“Gas!” Macy shouts, and sure enough, a canister starts spewing a lazy yellow trail that stinks of rotten eggs and—

 

“Hell,” Dean growls, spitting the taste out of his mouth.

 

“Fuck,” Jax answers, grabbing a fistful of Dean’s jacket and tugging him away from the nearest creeping cloud.

 

“Masks!” Ope shouts, tossing two their way.  Sack’s got his own on and is distributing them from a USMC surplus trunk.  On the towers and along the top of the bunker, alien heads peer bulbously down at him.

 

“We good?” He shouts into a walkie, hating the damp way his voice comes back at him through the mask’s breathing piece.

 

A flurry of affirmative clicks comes back, and he nods to himself.

 

“Light ‘em up,” He says, and four men who’d up until now been prone on the top of the bunker get to one knee and launch their own grenades into the line of trucks still lobbing the occasional poison their way.

 

There’s a satisfying series of explosions that makes Jax crow, pumping his fist and grinning like a madman at Dean, who seems to be smiling back from what Jax can see of his face through the gas mask.

 

The last of the gas canisters finish unfurling yellow banners as Blue reports, “That’s the last of the RPG trucks.”

 

Jax double-clicks and tries to take deep breaths.

 

Dean is staring at Jax, eyes unreadable through the fogged plastic of the mask, but Jax thinks he knows what the other is feeling, and if it wasn’t against every single sentence of guy code, he’d go over and touch Dean just to let him know it’s okay.

 

The sulfur alone must be bringing back memories, never mind the stench of burning flesh that’s evident even through the mask’s protective filter.

 

“One-Eye’s back,” Blue reports, and Jax risks ducking his head around the cover of the tower’s base to see the tall biker sauntering forward to stand once again near the point of no return.  Behind him, the shells of blasted trucks smoke and judder in the indefinite light of fuel fires.  In front of him, the ground is littered with the remains of men and machines, his only minutes before.

 

One-Eye puts a hand out, palm up, and curls his fingers impatiently in an unmistakable get-on-with-it gesture.

 

Jax snorts and shakes his head, shucks the mask, and steps out onto the road between the towers.

  
Dean’s warning, “Jax,” goes ignored as he starts to move ahead.  Above him all along the line, the sinister ratchet of guns being locked and cocked makes it clear that he’s thoroughly covered.

 

He stops on the other side of the wrecked bikes abandoned by their riders, now so much dust smeared on the broken road.

 

“That was just foreplay,” One-Eye postures.  “Next, you get fucked.”

 

“You drag me out here to yank your own dick?”

 

“I figured it was only gentlemanly, us being fellow one-percenters, to offer you one last chance before things get really ugly.”

 

“Too late for you,” Jax answers, turning on his heel to move off.

 

“You be sure to tell your boy about your answer when I’m shoving this knife up his sweet ass.”

 

Jax keeps moving, doesn’t change his slouch or swagger, though there’s a roaring in his head that demands he answer with blood and fire.  He breathes it away on a long exhale and sees Dean, without his mask, waiting at the base of the tower.

 

“Gas cleared,” Dean explains, and Jax nods.  “Blue said it’s cheap shit, not the real thing.”

 

“Stinks, though,” Jax adds, and Dean shoots him a look that’s almost grateful.

 

“What’d he want?”

 

“To suck my dick,” Jax says, loud enough for the nearest on the line to hear him.  Laughter comes back, the kind people who are under stress let loose when they need to get it out.

 

The next hour is spent watching the ginger forward progress of two bikes, one to either extreme end of the bunker.

 

“Looking for a way around,” Ope says.  He’s leaning against the tower, gun cradled in the bend of his arm, water bottle in his free hand.

 

“Truth or dare time,” Dean says, indicating what they’re all thinking.  If the bikers get in that way, it means the big guy isn’t going to help.

 

They have no reason to think Charming has been abandoned, but Dean is still tense, and Jax feels tight in his skin, too, remembering what the only angel he ever met was like, reminded, too, of stories Dean had shared over the months since he’d been back.

 

Bobby starts reciting a prayer in Hebrew as the bikes near the invisible perimeter they’ve called the “fry line” for as long as god’s been forking lightning from the still blue sky.

 

Here and there, someone joins in with his or her own version of supplication.  Jax recognizes an Our Father, a couple of Hail Marys, and one that he thinks might be a spoken version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  A few others aren’t in English, but the intention is clear.  It makes him shiver a little, and his eyes find Dean’s, which are wide, his face pale.

  
Dean shakes his head, says low, “This is bullshit.”

 

“It’s going to work,” Jax asserts, and it’s not a matter of believing so much as it is knowing.  He knows they aren’t forsaken. 

 

Dean just shakes his head again, disbelief—almost a kind of betrayal—evident in his face.  “It’s bullshit,” he repeats, louder and more vehemently.

 

“How can you believe in the devil and not in God?” Ope asks. 

 

“Ope,” Jax warns.  The last thing they need right now is contention in the ranks.

 

“I want to know, Jax.  How can he stand here and doubt God, when he sees what God does for us every day?  When he rose from the fucking dead himself?”

 

“I believe in God,” Dean surprises Jax by saying.  His voice isn’t right, though.  It’s tight and strained, like Dean’s got to think about how to make words and breathe at the same time.  “I believe God created us and left us here to fight it out like rats in the gutter, and when he needs something from us, he sticks his hand in and jerks us around.  God doesn’t give two shits about you or me or Jax or any of us.  He doesn’t give a fuck about who lives or dies here.  He only wants to keep Charming around as a part of his fucking plan—a plan he’s never going to share with us, by the way.  Get it through your head—if God saves us here today it’s not because he loves us.  It’s because he’s not done with us yet.”

 

Around them, a few voices have faltered to a halt, but more have taken up the prayers, some of them broken and uncertain, at least one of them completely wrong on the words, but almost every one voiced with complete assertion that they’re being heard.

 

Dean’s smile is bitter and tired.

 

“They’re dust,” Macy reports.

 

A cheer goes up all along the line, followed by a chorus of Hallelujahs and Amens.

 

“Score one for the chosen people,” Bobby says without a trace of malice or a hint of irony.

 

Dean snorts eloquently and shifts his stance and the grip on his gun.

 

“Dean,” Jax says, low and heavy, but Dean won’t look at him, instead fixing his eyes on the horizon dotted with the buzzing headlights of an enemy host.

 

Jax gives it up, then, knowing he’s not going to settle what’s here between them, or between Dean and god, while the rest of the world is going to hell.  Again.  Sort of.

 

He promises himself there’ll be time enough later to sort it out, a dangerous promise he knows better than to make, but then Blue is saying quiet into the walkie, “Movement,” and Jax is busy being the boss, though it doesn’t take much to put everyone back on alert.

 

Like a showdown in some tumbleweed-infested town, a line of Scavengers strides toward them, stopping at the expected place, making plenty of room for still burning vehicles and the wreckage of their brethren.

 

There’s commotion at the center of the group, One-Eye and another guy holding a slight, pale woman between them.  In the unforgiving klieg light, she looks dead already.

 

They freeze there, almost no movement along the line of alien faces, except for the woman, who seems to be sagging earthward with every heavy moment of waiting.  The two holding her haul her upward roughly, and her head rolls a little on her neck before she regains control of it.

 

Before Jax can figure out what One-Eye wants, he’s raised a knife, a fact Jax only realizes as the light catches on the blade in its lateral motion.

 

Then blood, almost black in the strange light of klieg-blown darkness, blossoms across her white throat like a necklace.

 

Her face contorts, fear or death-throes wracking it, and then she collapses on herself and she’s dumped, so much loose refuse, in a pile between them.

  
One-Eye smiles and makes a show of flicking her blood free of the blade and then leaning over to wipe it on her white-and-brown checked shirt.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Jax swears viciously, letting it into his face, the desire to kill this fucker, to make them all pay for their sins, real and imagined.

 

“There’s another one,” Ope warns, suddenly next to Jax, as though in the moment of the woman’s death time had jerked and juddered only for him, the rest of the world still going about its way around him but Jax caught there by the slow drip of blood from her throat and the quick death of light from her face.

 

One-Eye’s lackeys have dragged forward another victim, this one an old man, eyes milky with cataracts that make strange play with the light on his face.

Dean shifts beside him as though startled, and Jax turns to look at him, but he only shakes his head, a rueful, bitter twist to his mouth, and goes back to staring at nothing Jax can see.

 

“There are more where he came from,” One-Eye calls across the wasteland between them.  Jax nods to himself, less in response to the other’s words than as if answering some internal question.  He hates this terrorist shit.

 

“Acceptable losses,” Jax calls back, thinking that he doesn’t want to watch the old man die, even if he might have been fried trying to cross into the promise of Charming.  Thinking he might not have a choice.

 

But Dean makes a noise in his throat, and Jax spares him a glance, finds Dean’s eyes hard in Jax’s face and a line around his mouth, making him white-lipped.

 

“What?” He asks, and it’s harsh and tired and sick with anger.

 

Dean shakes his head and looks back at the gory spectacle unfolding in front of them.  One-Eye takes his time with the old man, playing with the knife, tormenting him with quick cuts he can’t see but can surely feel, for the way he jerks and moans in the lackey’s bruising hands.

 

The ruined voice of age wavers across the distance, begging words, and Jax watches because he has to, because the old man deserves this, at least, Jax’s regard, when it’s Jax who’s made the choice to let him die like this.

  
“Jax,” Dean says, disbelief and disgust in his voice.

 

“No, Dean.  We’ve got to hold.  He’s trying to bait us into the open.  He’s got nothing else.”

 

“He could lay siege,” Ope adds from Jax’s other side.

 

“Then we’ll burn them down and take them apart,” Jax answers.

 

“There’s plenty more innocent victims where the old man came from, and more coming every day,” Bobby throws in, moving close enough that it becomes a council, Juice and Sack and Piney also joining the ragged circle around Jax, only Teague keeping to himself and the shadows.

 

“What do you want to do?” Jax asks.  He’s weary, but he tries to keep it from his voice.

 

“We meet them on fair terms, old school.  Hands and knives, no guns,” Ope suggests.

  
Bobby nods, and Jax cuts his eyes to the others, one by one, and finds nods and terse affirmatives until he comes to Dean, who’s looking at Jax like he’s never seen him before.

 

He wants to take Dean by the shoulders and shake a yes out of him, say, “Fuck you!” for making Jax feel like he’s done something irrevocable, irredeemable here.

 

Finally, though, Dean nods once, sharp, and then turns his eyes away from where Jax seeks them out, back to the old man whose suffering has reduced him to animal noises, weak and pathetic.

 

Jax is turning back to talk numbers with Opie when the sharp retort of a single shot rings out, bringing them all around, guns up, aimed at—

Dean, who’s already lowered his own weapon, a rifle he’d apparently borrowed from one of Hale’s men.

 

Jax follows the line of an invisible bullet out to where an enraged One-Eye has been robbed of his fun, the old man unstrung in the dirt, a neat, red hole just above his eternally staring white eyes.

 

One-Eye starts forward, forgetful, but the growl of thunder brings him up short, and he steps back, clenching his fists in impotent rage and screaming.

 

“I’m going to kill you all!  I’m going to rape your children!”

 

“Whatever,” Dean mutters, switching the rifle back to semi-automatic and returning it to Hale’s guy.

 

“Nice shot,” Ope says, and Jax tries not to hear in it some judgment on him.

 

“We gonna do this, we better do it now,” Dean urges, nodding toward the broken rank of the enemy, where movement from the rear can be seen.  “He’s got another one.”

 

Jax moves forward, Dean and Ope behind him to either side, and makes it halfway across the expanse of dead earth before One-Eye returns to the front of his own line, dragging with him a skinny kid in a Pagan’s cut, PROSPECT rocker visible when he shoves the kid face-down into the dirt and plants his boot heel on the back of the kid’s neck.

 

Dean laughs.  “You wanna start killing each other, we can go back inside.”  But there’s something forced in his voice, and an icy finger of uneasiness starts scratching at his gut from the inside.

 

One-Eye’s smirk is bright with vicious advantage.

 

“This ain’t one of mine, strictly.  I think you mighta heard of him.  Twig here goes by Dennis to his family.”  He emphasizes the name by pressing down, wringing a strangled shout from the boy.

 

“Shit,” He hears Dean mutter, but before he can ask what the problem is, he hears another voice, a lot louder and higher, calling from the direction of the bunker.

 

“Let go of my brother, you motherfucking son of a bitch, or I’ll kill you my own fucking self!”

 

The big threat is followed by the slight figure of Sam, striding toward them with his fists opening and closing as if around a throttled neck, eyes blazing with righteous fury.

 

One-Eye laughs and pushes Dennis’ face down into the dirt again.  Despite the boot, Dennis squirms and struggles, shouting futilely into the uncaring earth.

 

Jax hears Dean’s movement behind him, turns his head just enough to see Dean intercepting the kid, who stops his forward charge a few feet beyond Dean’s easy reach, watching him with suspicious eyes, which he turns on Jax.

 

“He’s my brother,” Sam says. 

 

Jax has time to think _Fuck_ when Sam’s darting around Dean and dodging Jax’s instinctive snatch.  He swears he feels the fleece of the kid’s hood against his finger tips.

 

Sam isn’t dumb, Jax has to give the kid that.  He doesn’t put himself in reach of the enemy.  Instead, he stops smack in the middle of the downed Harleys and what’s left of the ashes of the dead, right on the sweet spot where One-Eye can’t get him.

 

“Get off my brother, Bone,” Sam says.

 

The man’s single eye goes wide, and the smirk slides off the guy’s face when he hears his name.

 

He saves his surprise, though, remembering to look tough in the next instant when he says, “Or you’ll what?  Swear me to death?”

 

Kid’s got his back to Jax, so he doesn’t know what Sam does, but from the reactions of the men standing behind Bone, it’s something scary.

 

Two of the big guys back up.  A third actually starts to turn around as if to walk away.  The others shift uneasily in their places, hands tightening on their guns.  No one aims at the kid, though, which Jax finds interesting.

  
Dean’s on his other side now, up next to him, and Jax can hear Dean’s anxious breathing.

 

“Shit,” he murmurs, barely audible, and Jax finds Dean’s face masked in the utter stillness he puts on when he’s inside something ugly, a vision or memory that Jax can’t possibly share.

 

“I said get off my brother,” Sam repeats, voice quiet with menace.  Bone starts to move his weight like he’s going to comply, and then he shakes his head as if there’s a fly bothering him and narrows his eyes to focus on Sam.

  
“Fuck you,” Bone stammers, but it takes effort.  Sweat starts to bead on his forehead and pour down his face, and still the kid doesn’t appear to be doing anything.

  
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dean chants beside him.  When Jax looks, his face is stone, but his eyes betray him.  They wear the look of a man who’s seen the worst thing imaginable and then imagined more.

 

“Dean,” Jax says, quiet, just between them, but Dean’s beyond hearing, or else he’s ignoring Jax, too focused on the kid to pay any mind to the rest of the world.

 

Jax wants to swear a little himself, but he keeps it back, swallowing down the foreboding to mutter to Ope, “Bring in Hale’s guys.  Bring in the back-up, too.  Tell ‘em to go old school.  Keep their guns strapped unless it goes south.”

 

Ope turns away, apparently unnoticed by the mesmerized enemy, who have eyes only for the slim Indian kid, and whispers commands into the walkie.  Moments later, Jax hears the subtle sounds of an army coming up at his back.

 

Bone doesn’t react because he’s fixed on the kid, hands clenching convulsively, throat working.  To Bone’s left, a ratty little man breaks rank and stumbles forward until his feet are dragging through the broken road of the sweet spot.

 

As if thunder is redundant, lightning slices through the night sky and shivers the man to electric pieces where he stands with no real warning. 

 

Even as several of the Scavengers start to back away, a second and third are dragged inexorably forward.  One of them goes limp with resignation, drops his head, and waits.  It doesn’t take long.  The other struggles against the invisible force pulling him toward his fate.  He thrashes his head, neck muscles cording, and screams wordless denial as he’s at last brought to a shivering stop in the ashes of the man who died before him.

 

An afterthought of ozone is all that’s left of him seconds later.

 

But Bone is still resisting, maybe his will keeping him stationary, maybe something else.  He’s the lone Scavenger on the line now, the rest having fallen back, out of the perceived sphere of Sam’s impressive influence.

 

Under Bone’s boot, Dennis curses in broken words and struggles uselessly.

 

Jax sees Sam sway, but even as he’s reaching out to hold Dean back, Dean is out of his reach, catching the boy as he falls backward, keeping him upright.  Jax catches a glimpse of blood on the kid’s face, sees Dean’s face full of anguished, stubborn denial, and watches with impossible clarity as Bone raises his foot and stomps it down on the back of Dennis’ neck.

 

There’s a sound like a damp branch snapping, louder than it can be, amplified by Jax’s horror and echoed by Sam’s, the boy’s heartbroken scream drowning momentarily the sound of a shot.

 

Jax is sure he doesn’t hear the bullet pierce Dean’s leather jacket.  He’s sure the sound of flesh tearing, the meaty thwack of a body driven backwards by a piercing blow, that’s all in his head.

  
But Dean is falling backward now, and Jax can’t seem to get there to stop him from slumping, half upright, an uncertain expression on his face that makes him look younger than he’s ever been since Jax has known him.

 

Now it’s his turn to voice denial, except his throat is dry, his tongue swollen in his mouth, his heart tripping up his chest even as his stomach drops away.

 

He lunges forward just as Bone sees his advantage, one of Dean’s hands resting volitionless over the broken edge of the fry line.

 

Too late.

  
Too late Jax grabs, gets only the scent of gunpowder and scorched leather, only the wheeze of Dean’s overworked lungs, only a glimmer of light in his closing eyes.

 

Dean has so many freckles.

  
It’s a stupid thing to think when everything’s going to hell, but as if the world has grown sharp with clarity, Jax sees the constellation of freckles on Dean’s face and can’t believe he hasn’t noticed them before.

 

That’s when he realizes he’s going to lose Dean.

 

When the enemy army sees the turn of the tide, sees the champion, all eleven years of him, still prone, though safe beyond the deadly demarcation, they surge ahead, and without a word of command from Jax, the Sons and Hale’s people charge to meet them, on both sides knives appearing in a hundred hands like the broken road had been seeded in steel.

 

There must be sound in the clash, shouts of anger, cries of pain, the collision of blades and bodies, but Jax feels like he’s walking underwater, can’t hear anything but the waves of heart-blood in his ears, can’t see anything but the narrowest promise of light, Dean staggering, shoving weakly at hands that bear him earthward now, not to lay him to rest but to pin him, to deliver kicks, to beat him down.

 

And as if he’s just again a part of it all, Jax hears the heavy breath of an opponent rushing toward him, drops his shoulder with a wordless, animal roar, flips the guy and keeps going.  It doesn’t even slow Jax down, his momentum carrying him forward into and past the vanguard, nothing in his ears now but the same word, Dean, nothing but the single focus of a boot-sole, the only part of him visible from Jax’s position.

 

He’s met by a faceless enemy, brings his gun up, fires into the man’s body, shatters the nose of another man with an upflung elbow as he moves closer to his target.

 

Then he’s there, at the mass of bodies around Dean, and Jax wades in like they are no impediments at all.

  
The first he grabs by a greasy ponytail, wrapping the hair around his hand for leverage as he pulls the man back, cups his chin in his hand, twists.

  
The man’s dead before his hair slips free of Jax’s grip.

  
The second comes up surprised, blood on his face and in his gaze, but he has no time to measure Jax’s intentions, because the gun speaks instead, tearing away the man’s jaw and eye, sending him pinwheeling bonelessly back into a third man, caught off-balance in mid-kick, who stumbles and falls beneath the dead weight of the other.

  
Jax shoots him in the groin, satisfied by the purple stain of bleedout.

 

The fourth and fifth have had time to recognize the threat and are shoulder to shoulder between Jax and Bone.  One has his gun up, but before he can fire, Jax feints a head-butt that makes him jerk, the shot going wide and giving Jax ample opportunity to bury his knife in the guy’s gut.

  
He hisses as he falls, like a punctured tire, and Jax starts for the next one, regretting his lost knife, when the guy cuts and runs, leaving Bone standing unguarded, though not unarmed.

 

Jax doesn’t look at his lover as he steps over Dean’s too-still body.  He stares straight into Bone’s one eye and wears cold death in his stare, so that the big man falters, the stupid sneer leaving his face to be replaced by neutrality maintained with visible effort.

 

Bone produces a gun, shouts, “To me!” like he’s some goddamned medieval king, and fires.  Jax feels the graze distantly, adrenaline carrying him forward as a second bullet strikes his left arm, spinning him off target until he can right himself, close enough now to drop and tackle, bringing Bone down, good shoulder buried in his solar plexus, and as the big man gasps and wheezes, Jax manages to get a knee on his chest.

 

Bone’s eye tracks Jax’s gun, even after he tosses it aside.

“No bullet for you, motherfucker,” Jax grits, teeth clenched in a deadly smile, all shark’s teeth and sharper things.

 

He digs his thumb into Bone’s carotid, wraps his fingers around that tenderest apple, and squeezes.  Bone bucks, the little breath he’d regained cut off, face going beet red in seconds, and Jax eases up, watching the desperate tears crawling from Bone’s good eye, before tightening his grip again.

 

He brings him to the brink of darkness once more, twice, again and again, and then relents altogether, even easing his knee off the man’s chest, waiting until Bone levers his eye open before he lowers his fingers toward their last destination.

 

Bone screams, a high-pitched mewling sound like a rabbit in a trap—or a human infant—but Jax ignores it, ignores the liquid give of the flesh around the eye, the strange sturdiness of the eye itself, the feel of the roots as they’re torn free, so much like gutting a pumpkin by hand that he almost smiles.

 

When he’s left his opponent blind and puking in a puddle of his own piss and sick, Jax rises to return to Dean’s side, drops to his knees, and searches for a pulse, realizing only belatedly that he’s still holding his grisly trophy.

  
He tosses it away, scrabbles desperately at Dean’s neck, knowing before he even touches the cold flesh that Dean is gone.

  
No matter. 

 

Jax staggers upward, slings Dean’s arm over his far shoulder, hefts him in a messy fireman’s carry, Dean all dead weight.  Jax pretends he hears his lover groaning against his back, says, “It’s gonna be alright, man, hang on, Dean, just hang on,” and stumbles the million yards to the junker bunker, where Tara waits despite all commands to the contrary, her hands busy with wounds and wrapping.

 

“Tara,” Jax thinks he says, but maybe not.  When she whirls at the sound of his voice and recoils, he wonders distantly what she sees that makes her look so afraid.  When she hesitates, he barks, “Now!” even as he’s lowering Dean to the ground.

 

“Don’t let him die, Tara,” he might say.  He wants to say.  He thinks it’s more like, “Dean,” and “Dean.” 

 

“Let me work, Jax.  You have to go away.  Let me work,” she’s saying, and he’s watching her lips, hearing her words like they’re on thirty-second delay, understanding nothing.

 

“Jax,” another voice says, and he turns to see his mother standing there. 

 

“Mom?”

 

“Jax, c’mon, baby,” she says, and he goes with her, back out onto the field of battle.  He wants to say, “Mom, no, you can’t go out there.  This is where you die,” but he knows there’s something wrong with that, though he can’t say what it is, can’t remember.

 

Then she disappears into the melee of retreating enemy and his pursuing army, and Jax chases after her, laying low any who come between him and his fleeting vision of her smile.

 

Later, maybe minutes, maybe days, he only knows it’s dark still or again, Jax feels a hand on his elbow, spins into the grip, brings a knife up—whose he doesn’t know, nor where he got it—and a hoarse voice says, “Jax, it’s me.  It’s Ope.  Put it down, Jax.  It’s okay.  It’s okay.  We won.  We won.”

 

Jax blinks the sting of sweat out of his eyes, stares blearily around him, unsure what they’ve won, exactly, unsure even where he is.  Then he makes out a landmark—the lightning-blasted oak where the road bends just before you come into Charming—and another, the Jessup house, still standing, though some the worse for post-apocalypse wear.

 

And then he remembers.

  
“Dean,” he breathes, breaking out of Ope’s supporting grip, jogging with fear-weak knees in the direction of the bunker.

 

Ope calls after him, and Jax thinks he hears feet pounding the ground behind him, but even a louder scuffle, the oof of bodies meeting, Ope’s raised voice, doesn’t stop or even slow him down.

 

He hears people call out to him as he passes, in victory or agony, he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, focused only on the idea of Dean whole and unhurt, waiting for him past the Gate and inside.  Home.

 

Dean’s there, under Tara’s hands, but he’s not whole. She’s cut his leather off of him, ripped away his shirt, exposing the mound of snaky scars that Dean is so careful to hide from everyone but Jax.  He starts to protest the loss of privacy until he sees her hands pumping against his breastbone, sees a smaller set holding a blood-wet pack against Dean’s breast, sees Bobby leaning to breathe into Dean’s slack mouth.

 

“No,” he means to say, but it comes out wrong, like a wounded animal has crawled into his throat to die.

 

And then he’s on his knees beside Sam, leaning over Dean, hand on his face where he can reach him, as much out of the way as he can be and still touch him.

 

“Dean, you’ve gotta come back now,” he says.  “Dean, c’mon, I need you.  Dean, I love you, don’t leave me.  Don’t leave me, you son of a bitch.  Dean.  Dean.  Dean!”

 

*****

 

 

 _God’s plan may be hidden from us, but there are a few things we can know, things maybe he gave us or that we found for ourselves, like the taste of the first cup of coffee of the day, the feel of a warm breeze blowing in an open car window on the road, the sound of a voice you never thought you’d hear again.  Don’t worry about the long game.  Day to day is what matters, what makes us human.  That’s good enough, never mind God’s plan.  He can go suck it._ (Book of Sons and Brothers21:3-7)

 

Someone has set fire to his chest.  It’s a slow burn, like acid eating away at his skin, and every time he breathes, he can feel the fire sinking into his lungs, moving slowly through his veins.  He tries to moan, but his throat is dry, and he can’t.

 

When he comes up to the surface of the burning dark again, Dean makes out light, blurry shapes, motion, a voice that he thinks he might once have known.

 

He hears Sam talking to him, _his_ Sam, and he lets go of the pain, of the struggle to understand.

 

Sam is standing whole and well, in jeans and a checked shirt with shiny buttons.  He’s smiling at Dean.  They’re somewhere in the Midwest, if the cornfields and wide blue sky mean anything. 

 

In the distance, just out of sight, there’s a road by the sounds of it, steady traffic, some of it big, all of it fast.  It’s a promising sound, and it makes Dean smile.

 

“What’s going on, Sam?  You’re dead.”

 

Sam’s smile widens.  “So are you.”

 

Dean takes it in, feels it out carefully, like he’s checking for a broken rib.  Instead of pain, a sharp excitement lances through him. 

 

Maybe he can finally be with Sam again.

 

But then he hears another voice, coming from behind him, away from the road that he can now make out as a thin, dark ribbon winding away over Sam’s right shoulder.

 

The voice is urgent, pleading.  He can’t tell what the words mean, but he knows by the tone that he’s needed somewhere, that someone needs him.

 

He turns toward it, feels his chest tightening, feels the ghost of agony working itself over him like a second skin.

  
“Dean,” Sam says.  “Aren’t you coming?”

 

Dean turns back toward his brother, the agony easing, Sam’s expression perplexed, longing, one hand raised as if to take Dean’s, lead him away toward the open road and forever.

 

Dean shakes his head, clears his throat, lets the tears come.  “It’s not time for me, Sam.  I have things left to do there.”

 

Sam’s face falls.  “Dean,” he says, and in his voice is the boy Dean raised, the man who watched his back, the brother he loved with everything he had.

 

“I have to go, Sam.  I have to go back.”

 

Sam nods, suddenly resigned, drops his hand.  “I’ll be waiting,” he promises, turning his back on Dean and heading toward the road, which is closer now, like it’s moved to welcome Sam.

 

Dean hesitates, wanting to know how he’ll find Sam the next time he comes.

 

Sam stops and half-turns, smiles until his dimples show.  His hair obscures his eyes in profile, but Dean sees the glint there all the same, hears it in his voice, too.

 

“I’ll find you.  Just don’t make a habit of this, okay?  I’ve got crap to do, too, you know.  Next time make sure you mean it.”

 

Dean nods, smiles, returns Sam’s half-wave with one of his own before turning his back on Sam’s retreating figure.

 

His vision narrowing to a dark tunnel, Dean loses sight of fields and sky.  His breathing grows harder and more painful with every step he takes away from Sam.  He doesn’t look back, though, and the other voice, the one calling from beyond the matte grey wall just ahead of him, grows stronger, until he can make out the words, make out the voice of the other man he loves with everything he has.

 

Dean cracks his eyes open to see Jax kneeling over him, one hand on his jaw and neck.

 

There are tears on his Jax’s face and haggard hope in his eyes as he sees Dean’s open.

 

Dean smiles and tries to say, “Hey.”  It doesn’t come out, but Jax hears it anyway.

 

Jax drops his forehead to Dean’s and breathes, “Hey,” back.

 

Then, Dean sinks into a darkness where no voices can reach him, and he’s there for a long, long time.

 

*****

 

“Teague tried to kill you?” Dean manages to sound both outraged at the bastard’s audacity and hurt that Jax didn’t tell him about it sooner.

 

Of course, he’d been in a coma for a couple of weeks and then it took him awhile after that before he could stay awake for more than a half hour at a time, but those are weak excuses for being left in the dark, as far as he’s concerned.

 

Jax nods.  “Yeah, near the very end of the fight he came after me, him and Poke Henry, but Ope dropped Henry and knocked Teague out.”

 

“What happened to Teague?”

 

Jax’s smile gives it away long before the seemingly innocent answer.  “He disappeared.  No one’s quite sure where he went.  They think he took off with what was left of the Outlaws and Bandidos.” 

 

The Pagans, as Dean already knows, were completely annihilated in the fight.

 

“Guess they’ll never find him,” Dean observes, tone matching Jax’s innocence.

 

“Not likely.”

 

“’sthat why you and Sam were cozy near the end there?  You had him doin’ leg work?”

 

Jax nods.  “Yeah, the kid’s pretty good at sneakin’ around.  He told me he saw Teague and Henry meeting in secret out by the old VFW post.  I figured they were working on some sort of coup, so I gave Ope and some of the others a heads-up.”

 

“And you didn’t tell me?”  Dean’s careful to keep his voice even, but the guilt in Jax’s gaze says his lover hears the hurt there anyway.

 

“I needed you clear of it if it came down to killing.  You had a history with Teague already.  If you killed him, even in defense of me, that’d be seen as a personal thing.  Teague’s motive was political, though, and that’s how we needed people to see it if there was ever a question.”

 

Dean gets it, he does.  He even appreciates the need for keeping him in the dark.  If he’d known about it, Dean might not have been able to separate his feelings from the necessity of inaction.

 

Still…

 

“I wish you’da told me, man.  I thought there was somethin’ else goin’ on.”

 

“Something to do with—“

 

“How’s the patient today?  You look better.”

 

The clinical costume and practical hair-do don’t hide Tara’s beauty, which is amplified by the soft smile she’s directing entirely at Dean.

 

Dean doesn’t remember her working over his unbeating heart, doesn’t know that she was there to bring him back from the edge.

  
What little he remembers from the last time he died revolves around voices, both of them calling him out of love.

 

One of them pleading out of need, too.

 

Dean’s not sure he believes in God’s benevolence or even in heaven and an afterlife where he can actually rest, but something that he’d thought was dead in him has stretched itself into new life since he came to to find Jax cupping his face, eyes twin beacons of hope making Dean think there was a reason to stay despite the agony and heartbreak of this world.

 

“I feel great, doc.  When am I getting outta here?”

 

Tara’s smile curls into a smirk, accompanied by an eyeroll that’s grown familiar in his weeks at St. Thomas’.

 

“That depends,” she teases, drawing out the words.  Dean catches the warmth in Jax’s smile, but he doesn’t feel the expected pang of hurt, like he’s getting ready to let Jax go.  He knows now—they all do, all three of them—who Dean belongs to and that Jax belongs right back.

 

“On what?”

 

“On whether you want the surgery to repair your knee now, while you’re here anyway, or you want to schedule it for later, after you’ve had some time away from this place.  I know you’re anxious to—“

 

“Are you sayin’ I might be able to drive again?”  Dean doesn’t care that he’s being rude.  His heart is tripping against his ribs almost painfully.  He can practically feel the Impala’s engine vibrating through the chassis as he takes her up to 60, 70, 80 on the open road, around curves, air full of sunshine and pines and the promise of an indefinite horizon.

 

Tara’s eyes grow serious, and her smile fades, to be replaced with the professional mask Dean’s also gotten used to seeing.

 

He reins in his galloping hope, braces himself for the inevitable bad news.

 

“I’m saying it’s possible.  We won’t know for sure until we get in there and look around.  But Doctor Maartens thinks there’s a better than 50% chance that we can improve your strength and mobility.  Some of what’s causing the stiffness is junk that needs to be cleaned out, some of it’s ligament damage we can repair with grafting.  But he can go over this with you in more detail when you’re ready to have the surgery.”

 

“I’m ready now.”

 

“Dean—“ Jax starts.

  
“I’m ready,” Dean asserts, looking at Jax, not Tara. 

 

“Okay,” Jax answers.  “But I’m not.  I’d like to get you home for a couple of days before I have to bring you back here.  My ass is starting to get flat from this fucking chair.”

 

Dean takes in the blue shadows under Jax’s eyes, the new lines around his mouth, and his heart clutches a little, guilt making it stutter.

 

“Put me down for sometime next week, then, okay?”

 

Tara smiles and notes something on her ubiquitous clipboard.

  
“In that case, I’ll sign the release papers right now.  But I’d like you to stick around for a few minutes.  Dr. Maartens finishes rounds at 2:00.  I’ll send him up to consult with you about the surgery.”

  
Dean and Jax both say, “Sure,” eagerly, and then swap identically embarrassed, smitten looks.

 

Tara giggles like a freakin’ schoolgirl and closes the door behind her.

 

Dean’s happy to let Jax help him dress, even if it means the process takes much longer than it usually would.  He’s breathless and probably buttoned wrong when a discreet knock at the door signals the doctor’s arrival.

 

After a brief discussion about risks and benefits, Dr. Maartens shakes their hands, thanks them for their part in keeping Charming safe, and exits, whistling something jaunty.

 

“I like him.”

 

Jax crowds Dean back into the hospital bed, until Dean has to sit down or fall down.

 

“I like you,” Jax whispers hot into Dean’s mouth, following the words with his tongue, teeth, lips.

 

Dean clings, feeling suddenly dizzy, which he totally attributes to his injuries.  When Jax is done with him, he tugs Dean upright, where Dean sways for a second or two before finding his balance.

 

Without moderating his volume or tone for their location or even the open door, Jax says, “I’m going to fuck you until you can’t stand up without help.”

 

Dean sees Wendy over Jax’s shoulder, her eyes huge, as if someone’s just buried an axe in the back of her head.  He half expects frantic violins to signal the approach of the killer.

 

Instead, she squeaks and spins, stumbling over her med cart in her hurry to escape the scene.

 

“Takes care of that crush,” Jax says, self-satisfied smile on his face.

 

Dean gives Jax an eyebrow, and Jax shrugs a little sheepishly. 

 

“Chuck likes her, and they’d make a good couple if she’d only get over me.”

 

“I don’t know which is more astonishing,” Dean answers, mock-hurt in his voice.  “That my boyfriend has turned into the town yenta or that you’d use my body in such a blatantly Machiavellian way.”

 

It’s Jax’s turn to offer an eyebrow—or both—in surprise.  “’Machiavellian’”?

 

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking the king of the freakin’ world.  Figured I’d better read up.”

 

Jax’s snort speaks volumes:  affection, pride, love.  He hooks his arm over Dean’s neck and tugs him into a half-hug, planting a wet kiss on Dean’s temple.  Then he lowers his lips to graze the shell of Dean’s ear.

 

“It’s good to be king.”

 

Dean shivers under the ghost of a touch and swallows against the words he isn’t quite ready to say.

  
Jax hears them anyway, dropping his arm and giving Dean a look that makes things low in his belly pool and grow hot.

 

“Let’s go home,” Dean says.

 

Jax smiles and leads the way.


End file.
